It’s not unusual to hear people talk about how soft drinks, or sugar could affect a guy’s chances of having children in the future by lowering his sperm count. You may have heeded this warning, and cut off sugar from your meals, while some of you just couldn’t seem to care less. But just how truthful is this claim, are there scientific research to back it up?
Well, let’s do some dissecting.
In a 2010 research conducted by a Danish group among Danish youths, they found out that men who drank Cola flavoured drinks had sperm counts that were almost 30 per cent lower than men who didn’t drink cola. This link, researchers found is unlikely to be due to caffeine, because coffee did not have the same effect, even though its caffeine content is higher. Instead, other ingredients in the beverage or an unhealthy lifestyle were thought to be involved. Some have linked the yellow dye No. 5 in Mountain Dew to lower sperm count.
Because Danish youth have increased their consumption of caffeine-containing soft drinks over the last decades, the researchers decided to study how this might affect their reproductive health. More than 2,500 young men were included in their study, and those who didn’t drink cola had better sperm quality – averaging 50 million sperm per millilitre of semen – and these tended to have a healthier lifestyle.
In contrast, the 93 men who drank more than one litre (that is 2 bottles of a 50cl soft drink) a day had only 35 million sperm per millilitre of semen. However, they also ate more fast foods, and less fruit and vegetables.
So, when looking at caffeine from other sources, such as coffee and tea, the decrease in sperm quality was much less pronounced, making it unclear if the cola, or the unhealthy lifestyle, or both, is to blame; making the scientists conclude that further research was needed.
It appears the culprit may not be the caffeine in these drinks, but some other additives present in the drinks – some think food dyes, processed sugar, and other such processed additives in fast food and drinks may be the real culprits. So, it’s not just staying away from sweet things, but rather, cutting back as much as possible on the consumption of processed foods which invariably contain several additives and dyes.
