Eating a half serving a day of soy-based foods could be enough to significantly lower a man's sperm count, U.S. researchers said on Wednesday.
The study is the largest in humans to look at the relationship between semen quality and a plant form of the female sex hormone estrogen known as phytoestrogen, which is plentiful in soy-rich foods.
"What we found was men that consume the highest amounts of soy foods in this study had a lower sperm concentration compared to those who did not consume soy foods," said Dr. Jorge Chavarro of the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston, whose study appears in the journal Human Reproduction. ~ Reuters, 23 July 2008
There is always a trade-off. We can't win all our games.
While eating a diet rich in soya-based food products might lower the incidence of certain types of cancer, men will have to worry now if having a lower sperm count might or might not be the better side-effect of the two.
