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.

[u/mvea]

https://cbmr.ku.dk/news/2025/not-all-calories-are-equal-ultra-processed-foods-harm-mens-health/

[u/clyypzz]

This is most likely just one factor of the problem. Others might be a far more sedentary life and work, more pollution of new types such as endocrine disruptores like BPA, PFAS, lead, aluminium, and tons of other stuff plus social factors plus stress from a changing society and so on and so on

[u/jackloganoliver → u/clyypzz]

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.

[u/details_matter → u/jackloganoliver]

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

[u/procrastablasta → u/details_matter]

There’s a sci-fi short story about humans having a locust mode

[u/3esen → u/procrastablasta]

What’s that called?

[u/RedditAdminAreVile0 → u/3esen]

World War Z