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Comment by username444 | Hacker News Reader

No link to the actual study. I need to know if they controlled for body fat and lifestyle.

It's well established that high body fat percentage is correlated with lower sex hormone production. Among other factors, this could be due to decreased bloodflow to the genitals.

It's not unreasonable to think maybe the people eating the junk food were simply fatter.

Another concern is whether they're getting adequate nutrients from other foods. There's a bit of substitution going on when a higher percentage of calories coming from junk food, but it's completely possible to eat McDonald's for lunch every day and still get 100% of your recommended vitamins, minerals and fiber from other meals.

This is just poor reporting.

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About 2/3 of caloric intake is simply for energy... and excess will lead to weight gain. That said, there is a hormonal component that can dramatically effect how absorption works and lead to a higher or lower chance of metabolic syndrome. There's also a genetic factor as well in terms of what does and doesn't work well. Pretty much all foods have a portion of the population that reacts badly to them.

You're probably right that it's highly related to body fat. But I would suggest it's also highly correlated to sugar (particularly fructose) intake as well as other simple starches. There was a controlled study reported just the other day that showed that even maintaining a given weight, macro nutrient changes can dramatically effect metabolic syndrome and related issues.

The actual study has not been published yet. So far, the researchers have only presented the information at a conference.

See https://www.eshre.eu/ESHRE2019/Programme/Searchable#!abstrac...

Thanks!

> diet, semen quality, reproductive hormones, and lifestyle factors

So it doesn't look like body fat or weight was factored in, unless they were lumped under "lifestyle factors" for some reason.

It should also be noted that they're confounding "Western" and "high fat". High fat diets are actually great for hormone production: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4271636/

Western diets are also high sugar. The fat isn't particularly high compared to say Paleo or other ancestral approaches. Though the quality/types/processing of the fats is pretty unnatural in a typical western diet.

I mean, it's the telegraph. What do you expect?

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