Real men eat fruit. A new study suggests that a “Western” diet heavy in processed foods could contribute to not only lower sperm quantity but also quality.
The study, published Friday in JAMA Urology, examined dietary habits as part of ongoing research to learn why sperm count; viability and testosterone have plummeted in the past several decades.
In other words, the swimmers aren’t swimming. Instead they are limping along, substandard and lower in numbers.
And it might just be their hosts’ diet that’s slowing them down.
Sperm count has dropped drastically since the 1940s, along with testosterone, a new study finds and now sperm quality is also in a deep dive. From 1973 to 2011 in Western countries, sperm count declined by 50% to 60%, researchers have noted.
Earlier studies have also pointed to the role of junk food in fertility, for both men and women, as Harvard University noted last year. This one unpacked those conclusions by analyzing four types of food intake and measuring sperm count.
This study is the largest study to date to examine the diet pattern with men’s testicular function, study author Feiby Nassan, a research fellow at the T.H. Chan School of Public Health at Harvard University, told media.
The study examined 2,935 normal-weight Danish men, and had them complete a survey of their eating habits while undergoing their routine physical. The men, median age 19, were being tested for their military-service fitness potential, as required for all over-18 men under Danish law.
The subjects were quizzed on their food intake, in four categories. They ranged from “prudent,” involving lots of fish, chicken, vegetables, fruit and water, to the Western-style diet, entailing consumption of pizza, fries, sweets, sugar-laden drinks and processed foods. Somewhere in the middle were the textbook Danish diet consisting of cold-processed meats, whole grain breads, mayo and cold fish; and vegetarian style diets, with soy milk, eggs, vegetables and barely any meat or poultry.
What became apparent is that the so-called prudent pattern of eating correlated with the highest sperm counts, the study found. Next was the semi-vegetarian, and then the Danish diet. Last in line was the processed-food, sugar-saturated Western diet.
The median sperm count of men who had the highest adherence to the ‘prudent’ pattern was 68 million higher than men who had the highest adherence to the ‘Western’ pattern, Nassan siad. Changing diet pattern may be a simple and inexpensive change, I believe that it is not only ‘you are what you eat’ but it is also ‘your sperm is what you eat.’
