The factor that produced the least change to the goodness of fit of the model was eliminated.in similar fashion, the factors were eliminated in turn until none of the remaining factors could be eliminated from the model without a significant reduction in the goodness of fit of the model.
We analysed the data using the stepwise procedures outlined above for all the dietary factors excluding olive oil to facilitate comparison with other studies, few of which included olive oil. we then added olive oil to the list of dietary factors and repeated the analysis. The fits of the various models were assessed by determining the percentage of variation explained by each model. To enable the fits of