24.7.08

tofu lowers sperm count?


News alert! Breaking news from Harvard's School of Public Health. Dr. Jorge Chavarro and his colleagues found a significant association between increased consumption of tofu and lower levels of sperm in male subjects. For more on this rather interesting finding, please check a piece by Tasmin Osborne in New Scientist. I tried doing a pubmed search for this article published in Human Reproduction, but I couldn't find it.

5 comments:

Peter M said...

Geia sou Yianni, conversely I 've been eating more watermelon!

Yannis Mameletzis said...

i'm never eating tofu again! :)

what's the deal on watermelon?
i'm going to write a piece on it.

Sam Sotiropoulos said...

I find this to be somewhat suspect a finding. After all, if we look at the populations that have tofu as part of their traditional diet, I don't think we can conclude that they have (demographically speaking) fertility issues... Perhaps the study actually showed that Caucasians or "Western style eaters" who consumed tofu suffered from infertility or some such issue which would offer some explanation of the demographic decline in the West, especially when considered in light of just how much soy product is used in everyday consumables throughout our Western food production industry?

Yannis Mameletzis said...

Sam, I actually would want to have a more realiable measure that quantifies the total soy intake by population (ie. Canada vs. US. vs. UK vs. China vs. Japan).

China is a tough one. So diverse.....so big. Anyway, I am going to re-read this Harvard study a little more in depth and scrutinize.

Best
Yannis

Priya said...

Is this correlational? A hormonal link, I'm guessing (testosterone???). What does it do to women, any idea? I can't find the article either...