r/science • u/mvea Professor | Medicine • 9d ago

Health Ultra-processed foods harm men’s health. They increase weight, disrupt hormones, decrease testosterone, and introduce harmful substances linked to declining sperm quality. They contain industrial and synthetic ingredients. This may be why over the past 50 years, sperm quality has plummeted.

https://cbmr.ku.dk/news/2025/not-all-calories-are-equal-ultra-processed-foods-harm-mens-health/
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u/jackloganoliver 9d ago edited 9d ago

Yeah. I think in general modernization happened faster than we have been able to adapt, whether to new chemical compounds and foods or just to new modes of doing something like feeding ourselves in general.

Within the past two hundred years, our lives have changed so much that our day to day behaviors look nothing like our ancestors' just two generations ago, let alone the last 5-6.

We live the lives of a different species really. One far more sedentary and more mentally/emotionally/socially taxed than in the past. It's no wonder our bodies fail to meet the demands.

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u/details_matter 9d ago

Grasshoppers of the Acridoidea superfamily are a good metaphor, I think. The locust form versus the grasshopper form: same species, wildly different behavior.

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u/scoopzthepoopz 9d ago

Weird that only a fraction of 1% of that family are locusts (19/6,800 per Cullen et al. ) yet everyone knows what locusts are. I also see environmental factors spur them to swarm and do other locust behaviors. Curious what industrialization and then post-industrialization will say about humans in hindsight.

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u/details_matter 9d ago

If this subject intrigues, I can heartily recommend a book-length examination of it: Civilized to Death by Christopher Ryan

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u/jackloganoliver 9d ago

I'm going to look into this, because it's something I've long struggled with myself. I feel like my brain is wired for a life that no longer exists, and I know i'm not the only one to feel this way.

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u/ray12370 9d ago

I can assure you that life style probably still exists, just probably not in the heavily modernized place you currently live in.

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u/jackloganoliver 9d ago

Oh god no. I'm not interested in giving up my life for that. I was just curious about the reading material