Foods That Boost Sperm Count: What the Science Says

The foods most consistently linked to higher sperm count and better sperm quality are those rich in zinc, selenium, omega-3 fatty acids, and antioxidants like vitamin C, vitamin E, and lycopene. Oysters, fatty fish (salmon, sardines), walnuts, leafy greens, tomatoes, berries, and Brazil nuts all appear repeatedly in the research, but the strongest evidence doesn't point to any single "superfood." It points to an overall dietary pattern, specifically the Mediterranean diet, which a systematic review of 35 studies identified as the most consistently beneficial eating pattern for male fertility.¹

That's the distinction I want to draw early in this post: individual foods matter, but the pattern matters more. A 2012 study of 188 men found that those following a diet high in fish, vegetables, fruits, and legumes had significantly better sperm motility than those eating a typical Western diet.² Your body doesn't absorb nutrients in isolation. It absorbs them in the context of what else you're eating, how your gut processes it, and what your overall oxidative stress burden looks like.

A handful of blueberries won't offset a diet built on processed food. A dietary pattern built around whole foods, healthy fats, and nutrient density creates the conditions your body needs to produce healthy sperm across the entire 72 to 74 day spermatogenic cycle.¹¹

I think of this as the foundation of the Sustenance pillar. Supplements have their place, and I cover them in detail in the supplements post, but food comes first. Always.

Why Food Is Your Most Powerful Fertility Lever

Of all the variables that influence sperm count, motility (how well sperm swim forward), morphology (the percentage with normal shape and structure), and DNA integrity, nutrition is the one you interact with multiple times a day. Every meal is either contributing to or detracting from the environment your body uses to build sperm. That makes dietary pattern the single most modifiable factor in male reproductive health.

Here's the part that's worth understanding before anything else, because it changes how you approach this. The research consistently finds that your overall dietary pattern predicts sperm quality better than any specific nutrient, and specific nutrients predict it better than any individual food. That ordering is essentially the opposite of how most fertility diet advice gets framed, which usually hands you a list of "superfoods" to add on top of whatever you're already eating.

Gaskins and colleagues demonstrated this directly. Men following a "prudent" pattern (high in fish, vegetables, fruits, and legumes) had 11.3% higher progressive motile sperm compared to men in the lowest adherence quartile.² The Western diet pattern, heavy in processed foods and refined carbohydrates, did not show the same benefit, even when it contained some of the same "healthy" foods.

The practical implication: what you eat most days matters more than any single food you try to layer on top of an otherwise poor diet. Specific nutrients like zinc, selenium, omega-3s, and antioxidants still matter, and individual foods matter because they deliver those nutrients in bioavailable form, but the pattern is the context that determines whether those nutrients can actually do their job.

The concept that ties all of this together is nutrient density, which is the amount of vitamins, minerals, fiber, antioxidants, and quality protein a food delivers per calorie consumed. High nutrient density is the reason vegetables, legumes, fatty fish, eggs, pasture-raised meats, berries, and nuts dominate any evidence-based list of fertility-supportive foods, and it's the reason ultra-processed foods fail even when they're fortified with isolated synthetic vitamins. Your body recognizes and uses nutrients in the context of the food matrix they arrive in, not as free-floating compounds added back to an otherwise empty substrate.

For me, nutrient density is the single most useful lens to bring to any meal. A diet built around nutrient-dense whole foods takes care of most micronutrient requirements automatically, without any need to track individual nutrients or lean on supplements as the primary source. If the food on your plate is dense with the compounds your body can actually use, the rest of the dietary decisions tend to sort themselves out.

Part of why nutrient density works so well is a related concept worth naming: nutrient synergy. Whole foods don't just deliver more compounds per calorie, they deliver those compounds in combinations that work better together than any of them work alone.

Zinc needs adequate vitamin C for absorption. Selenium and vitamin E work together to protect cell membranes from reactive oxygen species. Omega-3 fatty acids reduce systemic inflammation, which in turn reduces the oxidative burden on developing sperm cells.

When you eat a varied, whole-food diet, these interactions happen naturally. When you try to replicate them with a handful of supplements on top of a poor diet, the results are consistently weaker.

There's also the question of what your food does beyond delivering nutrients. Whole foods support the gut microbiome, which emerging research links to systemic inflammation and hormonal regulation. Ultra-processed foods do the opposite.

The blood-testis barrier, a protective structure that shields developing sperm from circulating toxins, can only do its job when the overall inflammatory and oxidative environment is manageable. Diet is the primary lever for keeping that environment in check.

The Mediterranean Diet: The Most Studied Pattern for Sperm Quality

If you're looking for a single dietary framework supported by the most evidence for male fertility, the Mediterranean diet is it. Karayiannis and colleagues studied 225 men and found a significant linear association between Mediterranean diet adherence scores and both sperm concentration and total sperm count, along with improved motility.³ Higher scores meant better parameters across the board.

The pattern emphasizes vegetables, fruits, whole grains, legumes, nuts, olive oil, and fish, with moderate poultry, limited red meat, and minimal processed food. What makes it work for fertility comes down to three overlapping mechanisms: high antioxidant density from the volume and variety of plant foods, a favorable omega-3 to omega-6 ratio from fish and olive oil rather than seed oils, and a broadly anti-inflammatory profile that reduces systemic oxidative stress.

Salas-Huetos and colleagues' systematic review of 35 studies confirmed this: fish, seafood, poultry, vegetables, fruits, and whole grains were consistently associated with better semen parameters, while processed meat, full-fat dairy, sweets, and sugar-sweetened beverages showed detrimental associations.¹

There's an important nuance the research rarely captures, which is that "red meat," "full-fat dairy," and "eggs" aren't monolithic categories. The fatty acid profile of these foods is essentially a function of what the animal ate. A peer-reviewed review of the literature found the omega-6 to omega-3 ratio averages around 1.5 to 1 in grass-fed beef compared to roughly 7.7 to 1 in grain-finished beef, and similar directional differences have been documented in pasture-raised dairy and eggs.¹² Organic and pasture-raised dairy, for example, has been shown to contain significantly more omega-3 fatty acids than conventional milk.¹³

The practical implication is that most of the epidemiological studies linking red meat and full-fat dairy to poorer semen parameters use food frequency questionnaires that don't distinguish source. Those detrimental associations are likely driven by the dominant grain-finished, conventionally produced versions rather than the pasture-raised alternatives that dominated the diet for most of human history. For me, this is why I would advocate prioritizing pasture-raised, grass-fed, and organic animal products when your budget allows, both for the more favorable fatty acid ratio and for the reduced pesticide and hormone burden that comes with them.

For me, the Mediterranean framework was the foundation of our preconception kitchen. We didn't follow it rigidly, and I'm not suggesting you need to cook Italian food every night. The value is in the principles.

Use avocado oil and extra virgin olive oil instead of refined seed oils, eat fish two to three times a week, and build meals around vegetables. Prioritize pasture-raised and grass-fed animal products when you can, and treat processed food as the exception rather than the default. The direction matters more than perfection on any given day.

The Key Nutrients and Where to Find Them

Within the broader dietary pattern, specific nutrients have strong evidence connecting them to sperm parameters. Here's what the research shows and where to find each one in whole food form.

Zinc is essential for spermatogenesis (the process of producing mature sperm) and testosterone production. Meta-analytic data across 20 studies show that infertile men have significantly lower seminal plasma zinc levels, and that adequate zinc status correlates with improved semen volume, motility, and normal morphology.⁴ The best whole food sources are oysters (by a wide margin), grass-fed beef, pumpkin seeds, crab, and lamb. Two to three oysters deliver more zinc than almost any supplement on the market, and in a form your body recognizes.

Two Brazil nuts a day are essentially all it takes to cover your selenium needs without supplementation, delivering roughly 150 to 200 micrograms in a form your body readily absorbs. Selenium plays a direct role in sperm maturation and protects against oxidative damage to sperm DNA, which is the mechanism underlying elevated DNA fragmentation scores on clinical semen testing. A double-blind, placebo-controlled trial found that selenium supplementation (200 micrograms daily for 26 weeks) significantly improved sperm concentration, motility, morphology, and viability in men with low baseline selenium.⁵ Beyond Brazil nuts, seafood (particularly sardines and tuna), eggs, and sunflower seeds are the other reliable food sources.

Omega-3 fatty acids (DHA and EPA) are structural components of the sperm cell membrane and play a critical role in membrane fluidity, which directly affects motility. A systematic review of 16 studies found that 14 showed a positive association between omega-3 intake and improved semen quality, with a meta-analysis of randomized trials confirming significant improvements in motility and seminal DHA concentration.⁶

The best sources are fatty fish, and an acronym I picked up from my friend Chris has stuck with me ever since: SMASH, which stands for sardines, mackerel, anchovies, salmon, and herring. These are all nominally cold-water fish and, for the most part, smaller species lower on the food chain. That matters because smaller and shorter-lived fish accumulate less mercury and other contaminants than the large predatory fish most people think of first.

There's also a deeper layer worth knowing. Emerging research on mercury toxicity suggests that what really matters isn't the absolute mercury content but the selenium-to-mercury ratio. Mercury's primary mechanism of harm is binding to selenium and creating a functional selenium deficiency, so fish with more selenium than mercury (which includes essentially all of the SMASH fish) are actually net protective. This is part of why smaller cold-water fish end up being the right recommendation on multiple axes at once.

Plant-based omega-3 from walnuts and flaxseed provides alpha-linolenic acid (ALA), which the body converts to DHA and EPA at a limited but meaningful rate.

On walnuts specifically: Robbins and colleagues ran a randomized controlled trial in which men eating 75 grams of walnuts daily for 12 weeks showed significant improvements in sperm vitality, motility, and morphology.⁷ Walnuts deliver ALA, vitamin E, and polyphenols together, and so the whole food outperforms any of those nutrients taken in isolation.

Folate (the natural form of folic acid) is involved in DNA synthesis and methylation, both critical during the rapid cell divisions of spermatogenesis. Leafy greens (spinach, kale, romaine), legumes (lentils, black beans, chickpeas), asparagus, and avocado are the richest whole food sources. I would note that the evidence for folate supplementation in men with adequate dietary intake is less convincing than the evidence for zinc or selenium, which is another argument for getting it through food rather than pills.

Bell peppers, strawberries, broccoli, kiwi, and oranges are the best whole food sources of vitamin C (ascorbic acid), with bell peppers delivering more per gram than citrus. Vitamin C is one of the most concentrated antioxidants in seminal fluid and directly protects sperm from reactive oxygen species.

Almonds, sunflower seeds, hazelnuts, and olive oil are the primary food sources of vitamin E, a fat-soluble antioxidant that protects sperm cell membranes from lipid peroxidation. Vitamin E and selenium work synergistically, which means eating them together (a handful of almonds with two Brazil nuts, for example) produces a stronger antioxidant effect than either alone.

Tomatoes are the reason lycopene ends up on every fertility-nutrition list. Lycopene is the carotenoid that gives tomatoes their red color, and it concentrates in the testes at higher levels than almost any other tissue in the body. A randomized, double-blind trial found that 25 milligrams of lycopene daily for 12 weeks significantly increased total sperm count and concentration in oligozoospermic men.⁸

The key detail with lycopene is that cooking dramatically increases its bioavailability. Cooked tomatoes (pasta sauce, roasted tomatoes, tomato soup) deliver far more usable lycopene than raw ones. Watermelon and pink grapefruit are also good sources.

Organ meats (particularly heart), sardines, mackerel, peanuts, and spinach are the richest whole food sources of CoQ10 (coenzyme Q10), though none of them deliver the amounts that show up in the clinical literature. CoQ10 is both an antioxidant and a critical component of mitochondrial energy production in sperm cells. Motility is an energy-intensive process, and sperm with higher CoQ10 levels tend to swim better. This is one nutrient where supplementation may make sense for some men because food sources deliver relatively modest amounts, which I discuss in more detail in the supplements post.

L-carnitine facilitates the transport of fatty acids into mitochondria for energy production, which is especially important for sperm motility. Red meat is the richest dietary source, with smaller amounts in dairy, fish, and poultry. Vegetarians and vegans tend to have lower carnitine levels, which is worth noting for men following plant-based diets during preconception.

The Macro Picture: Protein, Fats, Carbs, and Blood Sugar

Most fertility nutrition content jumps straight from "eat more of this food" to "this nutrient matters" without addressing the macronutrient baseline that sits underneath all of it. For me, this is essentially the biggest gap in the online advice, because the macro composition of your diet and the way it affects blood sugar are arguably more consequential for hormone production than any single food or supplement.

Protein is the macro most men are under-consuming. The modern diet, built around convenient carbs and cheap fats, tends to underdeliver protein relative to what the body actually needs for muscle maintenance, hormone synthesis, and cellular repair. The range I recommend during preconception is roughly 0.8 to 1 gram of protein per pound of target bodyweight per day, which for most men lands between 130 and 200 grams daily.

This sits at or slightly above the 1.4 to 2.0 grams per kilogram range endorsed in the International Society of Sports Nutrition's 2017 position stand on protein and exercise.¹⁴ The modest buffer reflects the metabolic demands of spermatogenesis and the value of keeping amino acid availability consistently adequate across the roughly 74 day sperm production cycle. It's meaningfully higher than the RDA, which was set to prevent deficiency rather than to optimize function, with the caveat that the preconception-specific evidence base is extrapolated from the active adult literature rather than from fertility RCTs.

Protein matters for fertility in a few specific ways. Amino acids are the building blocks for the pituitary hormones LH and FSH, which are the signals that tell the testes to produce testosterone and drive spermatogenesis, and for the enzymes that catalyze each step of testosterone synthesis. Amino acids are also the raw material for the rapid cell production that spermatogenesis itself demands across the 74 day cycle, since sperm cells, like every cell in the body, are built largely from protein.

Adequate protein also supports lean muscle mass, which is one of the strongest correlates of healthy insulin sensitivity and endogenous testosterone levels, and protein is the most satiating macronutrient, which makes weight management (another fertility lever) substantially easier. The best whole food sources are the ones already covered in this post: fatty fish, eggs, poultry, grass-fed red meat, and dairy, with pasture-raised and grass-fed versions getting priority when your budget allows.

Fats should make up a meaningful portion of total calories, not the trace amount left over from low-fat dieting. If protein supplies the signaling hormones and enzymes upstream, dietary fat supplies the substrate those enzymes actually work on. Steroid hormones including testosterone are synthesized directly from cholesterol, and very low-fat diets have been associated with reduced testosterone in multiple studies.

The goal is not to maximize fat intake but to ensure adequate intake from the right sources. That means monounsaturated fats from olive oil, avocados, and nuts; omega-3s from fatty fish and walnuts; and saturated fat from pasture-raised animal products in moderate amounts. The fats to minimize are refined seed oils and trans fats, which I cover in more detail in the next section.

Carbohydrates are where most of the nuance lives. A generic "eat whole grains" recommendation misses the point. What actually matters is carbohydrate quality, fiber content, and the context in which those carbs are eaten. Complex carbohydrates with adequate fiber, eaten alongside sufficient protein and healthy fat, produce a much more favorable blood sugar response than the same carbs eaten in isolation.

Non-starchy vegetables, whole intact grains like quinoa and buckwheat, and whole fruits are the building blocks, with legumes as an option for those who tolerate them. Refined flours, added sugars, and liquid calories from sweetened beverages are the pattern to minimize.

Fiber deserves specific attention here because it's the other major gap in the modern diet. Most men get well under the recommended 30 to 38 grams per day. Fiber does multiple jobs for fertility: it slows glucose absorption and blunts insulin spikes, it feeds the gut microbiome (which increasingly appears to influence systemic inflammation and hormone metabolism), and it supports healthy elimination of excess estrogens through the gut. Beans, lentils, berries, cruciferous vegetables, avocados, chia seeds, and flaxseed are the most efficient food sources and also happen to be on the list of foods already central to this dietary pattern.

For men with elevated HbA1c, prediabetes, or diagnosed insulin resistance, carbohydrate intake warrants closer attention. It's important to keep an eye on your HbA1c and fasting insulin, and in many cases a more moderate-to-lower carbohydrate approach (with non-starchy vegetables, legumes, and berries as the primary carb sources) makes sense until metabolic markers normalize. The goal is not permanent restriction but restoring the insulin sensitivity that underpins healthy testosterone production and spermatogenesis.

The organizing principle is blood sugar stability. If I had to compress the macro picture into a single rule, it would be this: build every meal around protein, healthy fat, and fiber, and let those three anchors determine how much room is left for starchier carbohydrates. This approach essentially removes the blood sugar roller coaster that drives hunger, energy crashes, cravings, and the insulin-driven hormone disruption I discuss in the section that follows.

Foods and Patterns to Reduce or Avoid

The flip side of the equation matters just as much. Removing harmful patterns can be as impactful as adding beneficial ones, sometimes more so.

Processed meat is the most consistently harmful food category in the male fertility literature. Afeiche and colleagues studied men attending a fertility clinic and found that those in the highest quartile of processed meat intake had significantly fewer morphologically normal sperm. The same study found the inverse for fish: men who ate two or more servings of fish per week instead of processed meat had substantially higher total sperm counts.⁹

Bacon, hot dogs, deli meats, and sausage all fall into that category. The mechanisms likely involve the nitrate preservatives, the advanced glycation end products formed during processing, and the saturated fat profile.

One important caveat: "uncured" and "no nitrates or nitrites added" deli meats are not a loophole. These products are typically cured with celery powder, which is naturally very high in nitrates that convert to nitrites during processing. The label is different, the chemistry is the same, and the effect on your body is the same.

Trans fats and heavily processed cooking oils are associated with increased systemic inflammation and oxidative stress. Fried fast food, commercially baked goods, and margarine are the primary sources. Swapping refined seed oils for avocado oil and extra virgin olive oil is one of the simplest and most impactful changes you can make.

High sugar and refined carbohydrates drive insulin resistance, which disrupts the hormonal signaling chain that governs testosterone production and spermatogenesis. Chronically elevated insulin increases aromatase activity in adipose tissue (converting testosterone to estradiol, a simplified but directionally accurate way to understand the pathway), raises systemic inflammation, and contributes to visceral fat accumulation, all of which degrade sperm parameters.

This doesn't mean you can never eat bread or have dessert. It means the baseline of the diet should be leafy green vegetables, grass-fed and pasture-raised proteins, and monounsaturated fats alongside omega-3s, with any carbs skewing toward whole, complex sources that don't spike blood sugar repeatedly throughout the day.

Ultra-processed food is, in my view, the single most detrimental category in the modern diet, and the research increasingly treats it as an independent risk factor separate from its individual ingredients. The combination of refined starches, industrial seed oils, emulsifiers, artificial additives, and engineered hyper-palatability drives gut permeability, systemic inflammation, insulin resistance, and oxidative stress in ways that go well beyond calorie content or macronutrient ratios.

Large prospective cohorts have linked higher ultra-processed food intake to worse cardiometabolic outcomes, worse mental health, and worse reproductive parameters, and the effect size is not small. For the men I work with, cutting ultra-processed food is the highest-leverage dietary change available, full stop. If you do nothing else on this list, stop eating food that comes out of a factory with a twenty-ingredient label.

Soy and phytoestrogens. The evidence here is genuinely mixed, and I want to be honest about that. Meta-analytic data across dozens of studies has found no significant effect of soy consumption on testosterone levels in men at normal dietary intakes, so the widespread claim that soy "tanks your T" is not well supported.

Testosterone levels and sperm parameters are different outcomes, though, and on the sperm side the picture is less reassuring. Chavarro and colleagues at Harvard found that men in the highest category of soy food intake had roughly 41 million fewer sperm per milliliter than men who consumed none.¹⁰ Other studies have found neutral or mildly favorable associations with specific isoflavones, so the literature doesn't point in one direction.

For me, this adds up to a cautious stance during preconception. Soy isn't a food I'd actively recommend for male fertility, and I think the skepticism many men feel about it is scientifically defensible rather than fear-based. If you do eat soy, traditional fermented forms (tempeh, miso, natto) and organic whole-food sources (edamame, tofu) are a different product entirely from the isolated soy protein, soybean oil, and soy lecithin that show up in ultra-processed food. Conventional soy is also one of the most heavily glyphosate-treated crops in the US, which is a separate reason to prefer organic when you do include it.

I covered the broader substance and environmental factors in a separate post. The overlap here is that alcohol and many Purity pillar concerns (BPA from plastic food containers, pesticide residues on produce) also enter your body through what and how you eat.

A Practical Week of Fertility-Friendly Eating

I'm not going to give you a rigid seven-day meal plan, because in my experience, rigid plans fall apart the first week someone has a busy Tuesday or a dinner out. Instead, here's the framework I used during our preconception period and the one I work through with my coaching clients.

Build every meal around the plate aesthetic. The simple visual I use with my clients is this: half the plate is dark leafy greens and other vegetables, a quarter is a high-quality grass-fed and pasture-raised animal protein, and a quarter is a complex, fiber-rich carbohydrate. Feature cruciferous vegetables like broccoli, cauliflower, kale, and Brussels sprouts regularly, and aim for as much color and vegetable diversity across the week as possible.

Then the whole thing gets drizzled and drenched in monounsaturated fats: extra virgin olive oil, avocado oil, macadamia nut oil, or the fats that come with the whole foods themselves. This structure takes care of the macro picture, the micronutrient picture, and the blood sugar picture all at once, without requiring you to track anything.

Roasted cauliflower and Brussels sprouts with a grass-fed steak and a sweet potato, all drizzled with olive oil. Sautéed kale and rainbow peppers with pasture-raised eggs and a side of buckwheat. A big arugula salad with grilled wild salmon, roasted beets, and quinoa, dressed in olive oil and lemon. The specifics matter less than the structure.

Lead the day with a protein-heavy breakfast, within an hour of waking. This is one of the highest-leverage habits I work on with clients. A breakfast built around thirty to forty grams of high-quality protein stabilizes blood sugar for the rest of the day, blunts the cortisol curve, reduces cravings, and front-loads a meaningful chunk of your daily protein target before life gets in the way. Think pasture-raised eggs, a grass-fed steak and eggs, a clean protein shake with a handful of berries, or leftover salmon from the night before.

Eating it within the first hour of waking is the part most men skip, and it's the part that matters most for locking in blood sugar stability across the whole day.

Two to three servings of fatty fish per week is the target. Salmon, sardines, mackerel, or anchovies are the most efficient way to get DHA and EPA in the quantities the research supports. If you don't eat fish, a high-quality algae-based omega-3 supplement is the next best option, but the whole food delivers selenium, vitamin D, and protein alongside the omega-3s.

A handful of mixed nuts daily. Walnuts deliver the ALA and polyphenols, almonds cover vitamin E, and two Brazil nuts handle selenium, so a mixed handful checks several nutrient boxes at once. This is a simple, portable habit. The Robbins trial used 75 grams of walnuts alone and saw significant results in 12 weeks.⁷

Tomatoes deserve special attention here because the lycopene they deliver is fat-soluble, which means cooking them in olive oil maximizes absorption. Pasta sauce made from real tomatoes, roasted cherry tomatoes, tomato-based soups and stews. This was one of the easiest wins in our kitchen.

Cook with avocado oil and olive oil, not seed oils. Avocado oil and extra virgin olive oil are both excellent choices. Avocado oil's neutral flavor and higher smoke point make it a convenient default for high-heat cooking, while EVOO's polyphenols make it uniquely stable and nutritionally valuable for dressings, finishing, and everyday cooking. Both are substantial upgrades over soybean, corn, canola, and other refined seed oils, which shift your omega-6 to omega-3 ratio in the wrong direction and contribute to systemic inflammation.

One practical note on avocado oil: you don't need to buy it organic. Avocados consistently rank at or near the top of the Environmental Working Group's Clean 15 list because the thick skin shields the flesh from pesticide residue, so the conventional version carries a minimal toxin burden.

A nuanced note on legumes. Lentils, chickpeas, and black beans deliver folate, zinc, fiber, and plant-based protein, and for people who tolerate them well they can absolutely earn a place in a fertility-supportive diet. That said, I don't reflexively recommend legumes three or four times a week the way a lot of fertility nutrition content does. Legumes contain lectins, phytates, and fermentable carbohydrates that can be difficult to digest for some men, showing up as bloating, gas, or broader gut irritation, and a food that's inflaming your gut isn't helping your fertility no matter how nutrient-dense it looks on paper.

If you do eat legumes, there's a traditional preparation that meaningfully reduces the problem: soak the beans overnight, drain and rinse them, and then cook them with a strip of kombu seaweed in the pot. The soak leaches out some of the phytates, and the kombu helps break down the oligosaccharides that cause most of the digestive trouble. If legumes still don't sit well with you after that, it's completely fine to skip them. The foods you actually absorb are worth more than the foods that look good on a list.

None of this requires perfection. The research measures dietary patterns across weeks and months, not individual meals. If you eat this way most of the time, the occasional pizza or burger doesn't register against the cumulative benefit of a fundamentally sound baseline. The direction matters more than any single day.

And one note on timing: because spermatogenesis takes 72 to 74 days, the food you eat today is building the sperm you'll produce three months from now. Starting sooner gives your body more cycles to work with. If you're planning to conceive in six months, the dietary changes you make now will influence the sperm that are developing during your actual conception window.