The Healthy Food That's Hurting His Sperm

Bodyrockers near and far know that fruits and veggies are an essential in any healthy lifestyle and meal plan. But what if we told you that these healthy treats are hurting his swimmers?  You can blame pesticides for that. According to research in the journal Human Reproduction, men who chow down on produce with the highest pesticide levels have a lower total sperm count. Researchers studied 338 total semen samples from 155 men between the ages of 18 and 55, keeping logs of how the participants ate and grouping the food into high, moderate, and low pesticide count groups based on USDA data. What are some high vs. low pesticide foods? High-pesticide produce includes spinach, strawberries and pears, whereas, grapefruit, beans and onions have low pesticide counts. The men who ate the least amount of fruits and veggies with lots of pesticides had an average sperm count of 171 million sperm per ejaculation. The men who ate loads of pesticide-tainted fruits and veggies? Only 86 million sperm per ejaculation. That's basically half of the amount. Those men also had an average of 5.1 percent of "morphologically normal" sperm (a.k.a. swimmers that are mutants), while the men who stayed away from produce with tons of pesticides had an average of 7.5 percent of non-mutant-swimmers. Obviously we aren't saying to stop eating your fruits and veggies here! There are a ton on nutritional benefits to both! So what can you you do? Try and go organic, when it's available. Also, regardless of whether it's organic or not, thoroughly wash your fruits and veggies with soap and water to remove some of the pesticides.