I imagine the center part of the Venn diagram between men who are just housing junk food and men who are deeply concerned about their sperm count so they can one day pass on their genetic heritage is either vanishingly thin or disturbingly huge. Either way, those at the center of that Venn diagram should pay attention to the research published in the journal Human Reproduction, which suggests that the ultra-processed food men eat might play a big role in male fertility.Researchers in the Netherlands used a large dataset, the Generation R Next Study, to track reproductive metrics across hundreds of couples. They found a pattern that will immediately send chills up the spines of any man currently chowing but down on some, say, Taco Bell or greasy potato chips: higher intake of ultra-processed foods, including packaged snacks, sugary drinks, and processed meats like sausage, was linked to a reduced chance of conception. For every increase in processed food consumption, men’s odds of subfertility (aka not being able to conceive after repeated tries) rose by 36 percent. Men in the highest intake group had significantly greater difficulty conceiving than those who ate the least ultra-processed foods.Obviously, sperm health is affected by a lot more than what you eat, though diet plays an important role. A diet consisting of way too many industrially processed foods tends to lack important nutrients and may increase oxidative stress, which can damage cells, including your precious baby-making sperm cells. Add in all the other hormone-disrupting chemicals from plastic products and PFAS (forever chemicals) and whatnot that we encounter every day, and it creates a cumulative effect of repeated chemical exposure that might severely damage sperm cells.That’s what happens if men overindulge on ultra-processed foods. Women have it a bit easier, as ultra-processed foods didn’t significantly affect how long it took to get pregnant. However, the impacts of those foods showed up later in early fetal development. At around seven weeks, embryos of mothers with higher processed food consumption were slightly smaller and had a reduced yolk sac volume. That last bit is important because that’s the structure that supplies nutrients before the placenta fully forms.This Common Habit May Be Bad News for Your SpermThose effects lessened later in the first trimester, but since those early developmental weeks are an important and sensitive window, even small changes can carry long-term implications we don’t yet understand.One of the key takeaways here, at least from the research team’s observations, is that the father’s diet seems to have a huge influence on whether conception happens at all. The mother doesn’t have to worry about that until after the child has been conceived. Even moderate consumption of ultra-processed foods was enough to show measurable effects, which makes you wonder what happens when ultra-processed foods are the dominant diet, as they can often be in places like the United States.The study can’t answer that, but it does provide enough information for us to guess that the male fertility problem cropping up across Western nations might at least have a little to do with all the corporate junk we’re eating. The post This Common Habit Is Ruining Your Sperm appeared first on VICE.