Why does everything that tastes so good have to be so bad? (Cyclonebill / Flickr Creative Commons)

If you’re trying to conceive, you may want to tell your hubby to hold off on that bacon. Men who eat even just one slice of processed meat a day have 30 percent fewer sperm than those who don’t.

At this year’s American Society for Reproductive Medicine conference, Harvard School of Public Health presented a study showing that men who eat processed meats such as bacon, cheeseburgers and hot dogs have both a poorer sperm quality and a lower sperm count than those who don’t. 

A man is considered to have healthy sperm if he has sufficient sperm count and if his ejaculation contains more than 15 million sperm per milliliter. His sperm must also have good morphology and good mobility. 

A Harvard team studied sperm samples of 156 volunteers at Massachusetts General Hospital Fertility Center. While many scientists consider this sample size small, Harvard’s team did find negatives that come from eating processed meats, and positives that come from eating fish. While men who ate processed meats had the lowest levels of sperm count and quality, men who ate fish had the highest.

If you’re trying for a baby but aren't a fish fan, research shows you could also try specific forms of exercise. Studies show that weightlifting increases testosterone and insulin levels, which both have direct correlations with quality sperm count. However, exercises such as jogging and bicycling actually drop sperm count by about 30 percent. A Harvard graduate student hypothesized that a biker’s bike seat adds pressure and heat to the testicles, which may explain a drop in fertility. 

Since Harvard’s findings are considered preliminary, and since so many factors affect male fertility, doctors are hesitant to recommend any type of dietary changes to men hoping for a baby. Doctors said that they will continue looking into this matter in order to either establish more proof or to confute it.