Where’s the Beef?
Does eating steak and burgers decrease your sperm count? According to some news stories put out last summer, it sure does. In fact, it’s almost become “common knowledge” that red meat keeps you from having kids.
Or does it? Unfortunately, it looks like the study that those stories were based on may not actually have said what the newspapers thought it did. As is so often the case, a flashy, sexy headline about the dangers of red meat may have obscured a truly useful message about male infertility.
The original study was done by Dr. Maime Mendioloa and his colleagues in Spain at Institution Bernabeau. There were other organizations, such as the Department of Education and Culture of Murcia and the Seneca Foundation.
The study found that men who had normal sperm typically had higher diets of carbs, fiber, folate, Vitamin C and lycopene. Conversely, those same men tended to have lower intake of proteins and fats.
The researchers in the study made some specific conclusions from this data. They concluded that a low intake of those antioxidant nutrients mentioned above could lead to poor semen quality in Spanish men.
Now, the study didn’t examine specifics like whether or not the participants actually ate red meat. It looked only at raw nutritional numbers such as fat, protein and the presence of antioxidant nutrients. Nowhere in the study is a measurement of how many cheeseburgers these Spanish men ate on their way to the fertility clinics.
The newspapers, of course, ran with the story. The real message, and the one that’s most useful from the study, is that a diet high in carbs, fiber, folate, Vitamin C and lycopene can help healthy sperm. Instead the message got lost in a sensational cover story about the badness of beef.
Finally, it’s worth considering the fact that a case-control study like this one doesn’t prove causation. There are unmeasured factors that can contribute to the final result, and while it’s likely that the study’s conclusions may be accurate much more research in the area is needed before grand pronouncements can be made about beef and sperm quality.
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