It’s no secret that the standard American diet is bad for your health and tied to even worse fertility outcomes. One such component of the standard American diet is sugar-loaded soft drinks. In a study published in Human Reproduction, researchers from Scandinavia, Harvard Medical School, Harvard T.H Chan School of Public Health, and Bringham and Woman’s Hospital in Boston, looked at the effect of sweetened beverages on semen quality and reproductive hormone levels.

The study comprised of 2935 young men, median age of 19 years old. Participants, in a self-reported questionnaire, tracked their daily intake of sugar-sweetened beverages, artificially-sweetened beverages (diet soda), energy drinks, and fruit juice. The researchers found that just 7.5 ounces of sugar-sweetened beverage per day drop the sperm count by 13.2 million per mL compared to non-consumers. To Normal sperm count is between 15 million to 200 million per mL and a normal can of soda is 12 ounces.

In addition, also to no surprise, sugar-sweetened beverage intake was also associated with lower sperm count and serum inhibin B (a hormone marker of sperm production). Artificially-sweetened beverages were associated with decreased sperm motility. Fruit juice had no effect on the measured outcomes.

Don’t let Coca-Cola demasculate you, cut out the soda in your diet.

FL Nassan et al. Association between intake of soft drinks and testicular function in men. Human Reproduction 2021. https://doi.org/10.1093/humrep/deab179