We all know that fruit and vegetables are good for you, but if you are trying to father a child you may want to think organic or avoid certain ones.
It has been shown that occupational and environmental exposure to pesticides can lead to lower sperm quality, but according to a paper published in the Human Reproduction journal there was not research on sperm quality and exposure to pesticides from diet.
So researchers from Boston, USA, decided to see there was a link between pesticide ingestion and sperm quality. They looked at what the men attending a fertility clinic said they had been eating and compared this to data collected on the amount of pesticide residue that is ingested from each kind of fruit and vegetable based on published values.
What they found is enough to make any red blooded male think about switching to organic. First the good news for you “salads are just plate decoration” people out there, they did not find a link between fruit and vegetable consumption and sperm quality. What they did observe though, was that men who consumed more fruit and vegetable noted for having high residues of pesticides had sperm of lower quality.
As with all these sperm quality papers, the data is based on looking at sperm motility (how they are swimming) and possibly the percentage of live/dead sperm so you could argue that as it only takes one you’d be all right….but it’s probably best not to dismiss it so easily.
Suddenly apples with blemished skin are not looking so bad.