If you are a fan of fruits and vegetables and trying to have a baby, this study may be of interest to you. Published in the trade journal Human Reproduction, it reveals that the higher levels of pesticide residues in fruits and vegetables are associated with lower sperm quality.
This work was carried out with 155 men aged 18 to 55 attending an infertility treatment center. Conducted from 2007 to 2012, the study analyzed 338 collections of sperm from those men seeking to have a child. The researchers then correlated their consumption of fruits and vegetables loaded with pesticides with their sperm quality. Result: The men consuming the most fruits and vegetables “rich” in pesticides had a lower sperm count of 49% compared to the men who are less fond of them. The former have 86 million spermatozoa per ejaculate against 171 million for the latter. The consumption of fruits and vegetables loaded with pesticides would also induce a 32% drop in the number of normal spermatozoa.
Pesticide content was not measured directly but estimated based on data from the US Department of Agriculture. Fruits and vegetables have thus been divided into three categories according to their content of pesticide residues: low (peas, beans, grapefruit, onions, etc.), medium or high (strawberries, spinach, peppers, apples, pears, etc. .). Washing and / or peeling these foods was also taken into account by the research team.
“These results suggest that exposure to pesticides used in agricultural production for food may be sufficient to affect spermatogenesis [fabrication de spermatozoïdes] in humans ”, underline the authors, quoted by AFP. However, they specify that this study will require further research to be truly validated and confirmed, especially since it was not carried out on a small number of participants.
“These results should not discourage the consumption of fruits and vegetables in general”, comments Jorge Chavarro, professor of nutrition and epidemiology at Harvard Medical School in Boston (United States), and co-author of the study. However, the latter suggests to favor the consumption of products from organic farming or to avoid products known to contain a lot of pesticide residues.
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