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/Worldly_Influence_18 → u/jackloganoliver]

We live the lives of a different species really. One far more sedentary

True.

and more mentally/emotionally/socially taxed than in the past.

We don't know that but... it's almost certainly not true.

We've had 80 good years but before that, things were increasingly mentally, emotionally and socially taxing the further you go back.

[u/jackloganoliver → u/Worldly_Influence_18]

You don't think we're more mentally taxed than we as a species have ever been before?

I'd love to explain why I feel that way.

First, the human knowledge pool is just larger. The average human is more away of, well, everything than they have been in the past. Some of this is good knowledge to have, such as making vaccines, cancer treatment, etc. We can make foods safer and tastier. That's good!

But with that, we've also gained mass media telling us about new threats to our safety, it stokes fear, we are more aware of atrocities happening halfway across the world, and we are forced to observe it. That is emotionally taxing. Maybe not to everyone, but it's been documented to cause emotional struggles for many.

Additionally, media means that beauty standards are in our face with much more regularity. Beautiful standards have always existed, but when mass media, advertising everywhere, and the conversation online, there's never a break from it.

Not to mention we carry computers around in our pockets, which means works never really leaves us. While it's not everyone in every sector of the economy, there are millions of people who never really stop working that to technology. They're forced to take calls out respond to emails at all hours. That's emotionally taxing.

This is before we get into how many bills and expenses there are that humans aren't adapted to. The average American spends $25k/year on just their top 10 expenses -- that's just the top 10. For most of human history, the idea of a monthly expense was nonexistent, but that changed, and now people have to financially plan with far more variables in play.

And the thing is, I could keep going. This isn't to say life wasn't emotionally taxing two centuries ago. It certainly was, and always has been.

But the sheer volume of things modern humans have to account for, from work to personal lives to societal standards, laws, to medical appointments (routine medical care is less than a century old!), etc etc etc etc. Our brains are just handling so much not information and responsibility than ever before.

I could keep going. And going. And going.

I will absolutely say that the stakes were probably much higher 300 years ago, but we are burdening people with hundreds, maybe thousands, of minor tasks and other responsibilities that we don't ever stop to think about, but they're absolutely taxing our resources. We're expected to meet the expectations of people we have never met and never will meet.

[u/Worldly_Influence_18 → u/jackloganoliver]

My grandfather was a genocide survivor. He witnessed his father (and others) get crippled in an attempt to destroy their community's way of life. He saw so much evil as a child he volunteered to fight in WWII despite being exempt. He died from a heart attack in his early 40s.

This was two generations ago.

For people in other countries they only have to go back one generation, if that.

An older colleague of mine got to experience the smell of piles of burning bodies as a child (he was told to close his eyes)

But okay. Media beauty standards

[u/jackloganoliver → u/Worldly_Influence_18]

So, if it's within the last few generations, that's part of what I'm talking about that advancement has outpaced our capacity to adapt. Advancements in technology even enabling the industrialization of murder is part of that.

What I'm speaking to is that the advancements we've made as a species have outpaced our physical capacity to adapt, and as such we are living in such an unfamiliar life compared to our ancestors' lives that, from a purely observational standpoint, we are living the lives of a different species.

I'm not saying modern inconveniences are emotionally worse than genocide. I'm saying that there are collectively so many more various emotional and social stressors by sheer quantity than has existed other times in history.

Please don't misrepresent what I'm saying.

I hope your grandfather is able to enjoy the blessings in his life after what he went through.