For the most part, that means all children who are overweight or obese, which is about 30 percent of children in the US.

The authors based their study on national data from thousands of children to see whether body mass index (BMI), a measure of body fat based on height and weight, can be used as a reliable way to find kids with high cholesterol levels.

They looked at the relationship between BMI and two different cholesterol measures, including total cholesterol and low density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol, that is 'bad' cholesterol, said an U-M release.

The study appeared in the August edition of the Archives of Paediatric and Adolescent Medicine.