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/BoleroMuyPicante → u/jackloganoliver]

I can see us being more socially taxed today than in the past, but I'm not sure about mentally or emotionally. A century ago you were pretty much guaranteed to have at least one child die before adulthood, child abuse was considered good parenting, women were still practically property (extraordinarily taxing for the women, probably made the men pretty happy).

[u/jackloganoliver → u/BoleroMuyPicante]

I guess i don't necessarily see the social aspect of that as detached from the mental or emotional. Because suddenly our connectedness compounds those sorts of tragedies, though they are far less likely today (thankfully). If it happens to us, we have more people we have to explain it to, more opinions we have to hear, more questions, more, more, more.

And I say this as someone with trauma in my past (not interested in getting into any type of trauma Olympics, but I'm happy to answer genuine questions people have about trauma, coping, etc.) that we tend to underestimate how taxing those social interactions are when trying to deal with something emotionally or mentally taxing. I've heard from other people who had similar experiences that yeah, the trauma is as awful as people imagine, but it's the carrying cost that just continues to build because of the social implications from the hardships we face that are the biggest threat.

As a species, we're expected to reserve emotional and mental energy for more people than ever. I just view that as a compounding stressor...even though ironically the goal should be for society to come together to build support systems for people in hardship that they don't have to go through it alone. Society should be a system of support, and instead it feels very adversarial, but that's a completely different discussion.