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Bacon Lowers Sperm Counts, Study Shows

Good news for kosher men everywhere

by
Stephanie Butnick
October 15, 2013
(iStock.)
(iStock.)

A new study from Harvard University shows that consuming even a small amount of bacon each day can lower a man’s sperm count. According to Medical Daily, researchers examined the diets of 156 men with infertility concerns, and found that processed meats like bacon and hamburgers had a negative impact on the men’s sperm count.

Dr. Myriam Afeiche of Harvard’s School of Public Health said of the study, “We found the effect of processed meat intake lowered quality and fish raised quality.” As if Jewish boys didn’t feel guilty enough eating bacon already.

Speaking of bacon, novelist Rachel Kadish took to Tablet today to explain that while she went to Jewish day school and keeps a kosher kitchen, she’s taken up a somewhat illicit relationship with the BLT. Its psychic value, for her, overrides dietary laws—it’s an agent of catharsis:

This, of course, makes BLTs delicious. And since we all need breakable taboos in life, the BLT has over the years become my pressure-valve of choice. When I am having a truly lousy day—when something is driving me so profoundly nuts that I want to catch a shuttle to Jupiter; when I want to quit every responsibility I have, but of course I can’t—the BLT is waiting for me in that little psychic box marked in case of emergency, break glass.



I ration my BLTs. I eat one maybe once a year, sometimes only once every two years. What’s more, I calibrate my position on the BLT scale with grim glee. I will text my friend Tova: ice dam w roof leak, kids home sick, am at BLT DEFCON 2. The BLT scale has become a way to register protest and at the same time soldier on.

Soldier on, Rachel. Just keep the bacon away from your husband.

Stephanie Butnick is chief strategy officer of Tablet Magazine, co-founder of Tablet Studios, and a host of the Unorthodox podcast.