Craving that juicy beef tenderloin recipe? Eating excessive meat for mothers has been linked to increased sterilization of sperm counts in their boys raised in their family. In a study, mothers who ate meat daily decreased their sons' sperm count by nearly 25%. It is more common to see those searching for sperm count enhancers in assisting them in their mutual pregnancies.

Low sperm count? It's your mother's fault 28 March 2007 - By Maggie Fox - news.com.au WOMEN who eat a lot of beef while pregnant give birth to sons who grow up to have low sperm counts, new research suggests. Researchers believe pesticides, hormones or contaminants in cattle feed may be to blame. Chemicals can build up in the fat of animals that eat contaminated feed or grass, and cattle were and are routinely given hormones to boost their growth. "In sons of 'high beef consumers' (more than seven beef meals/week), sperm concentration was 24.3 per cent lower," the researchers wrote in a report, published in the journal Human Reproduction. The team at the University of Rochester Medical Centre in New York studied data on the partners of 387 pregnant women in five US cities between 2000 and 2005, and on the mothers of the fathers-to-be. Of the 51 men whose mothers remembered eating the most beef, 18 per cent had sperm counts classified by the World Health Organisation as sub-fertile. "The average sperm concentration of the men in our study went down as their mothers' beef intake went up. But this needs to be followed carefully before we can draw any conclusions," said Shanna Swan, who led the team. Ms Swan said she would like to study infertile men to see if similar findings might hold for them. "I was really surprised when we found this. It was a really strong association," Ms Swan said. Ms Swan is perhaps best known for controversial findings that male sperm counts are falling in many regions. She has been doing research to find out if environmental hormones may be to blame. "We know from rodent studies that even tiny amounts of estrogen in utero (while in the womb) can affect sperm count," Ms Swan said. Ms Swan now wants to test young men living in the European Union, where hormones have been banned in beef since 1988. She said beef eating was the only real link between the women whose sons had low sperm counts. "Almost nobody ate a lot of other meat and if they did, they also ate a lot of beef," she said.