Sperm counts in Western men dropped 52.4% between 1973 and 2018, according to a meta-analysis published in Human Reproduction Update.
Testosterone levels in American men have declined an average of 1% per year since the 1980s, independent of age. A 60-year-old man tested in 2004 had less testosterone than a 60-year-old man tested in 1994.
Suicide rates among American men have risen across nearly every age bracket since 2000. Men account for roughly 80% of all suicides in the United States.
Military fitness rejection rates among 17-24-year-old American men have risen to roughly 77%, according to Department of Defense data.
Marriage rates and fatherhood rates among American men are at the lowest levels in recorded history.
These five trends are usually reported in five different stories. Almost nobody publishes them together. When you do, a question presents itself that the cultural conversation has been avoiding.
What if American masculinity isn't dying culturally first? What if it's dying biologically, and the cultural symptoms are downstream?
The stories we have been telling
The dominant cultural explanations for male decline have been screens and pornography. Dating apps and the collapse of the marriage market. The decline of religion and institutional meaning. Political polarization and identity confusion. Economic insecurity and the disappearance of working-class jobs.
None of these explanations are wrong on their own terms. Each describes something real. But all of them share one assumption: that the male body is unchanged, and the problem lives in the man's environment or psyche.
What if the body itself has changed?
What if the biological substrate that produces male drive, male confidence, male physical capacity, and male reproductive fitness has been quietly degrading for seventy years — and the cultural symptoms everyone is arguing about are downstream of a biological event nobody is naming?
What happened to American food between 1950 and now
Soil depletion. USDA data documents a significant decline in the mineral content of American fruits and vegetables since the 1950s. Industrial farming practices, monoculture, and synthetic fertilizers replenish nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium — the three elements that make plants grow large and fast — while ignoring the 70+ trace minerals the human body requires. The soil produces more food. The food contains less nutrition.
Early harvesting and long-haul shipping. Produce is picked before ripening to survive transport across the country. Nutrients that develop during the final maturation stage never form. The food arrives looking ripe but is nutritionally incomplete.
Plastic packaging and chemical preservation. Introduces endocrine-disrupting compounds — BPA, phthalates, PFAS — that the human body has no evolutionary template for processing. These chemicals directly interfere with hormone production and regulation.
Hormones and antibiotics in livestock. The meat protein supply has been altered at the molecular level. What enters the male body through animal protein is no longer what entered it in 1950.
Synthetic fortification. Vitamins get added back into processed food in synthetic forms with poor bioavailability. Trace minerals are never replaced. The label says "enriched." The body disagrees.
Pesticide residue and heavy metals. Cumulative load on the male endocrine system from compounds that bioaccumulate over decades. The exposure is not acute. It is chronic, low-grade, and invisible.
What a depleted food supply does to male biology
The male endocrine system requires trace minerals for testosterone synthesis. Without zinc, magnesium, boron, and the supporting mineral spectrum, the enzymatic process that converts cholesterol into testosterone stalls at the source. The signal fires. The production line is empty.
Sperm production requires zinc, selenium, and the supporting mineral spectrum. The 52% decline in sperm counts maps directly onto the timeline of soil mineral depletion.
Brain function requires zinc and copper for neurotransmitter synthesis. Serotonin, dopamine, norepinephrine — the chemicals that produce motivation, mood stability, and cognitive clarity — all require mineral cofactors. The depression and motivation collapse being treated with SSRIs may be, in many cases, a mineral deficiency being treated with a pharmaceutical.
Muscle and bone require the structural mineral stack — calcium, phosphorus, magnesium — for maintenance and repair. The physical weakness showing up in military fitness data is not a training problem. It is a raw material problem.
The cardiovascular system requires magnesium for proper rhythm and function. The mood and motivation circuits depend on neurotransmitters that depend on minerals.
Every single one of the trends in this article's opening paragraphs has a biological thread that connects to mineral deficiency. None of them have been investigated through this lens publicly.
"This complexity highlights the need to evaluate trace elements not in isolation but as essential components of a broader ecological system."
Why nobody has connected the dots publicly
The structural incentives run against this story being told. Pharmaceutical companies generate revenue from prescriptions written for symptoms of mineral deficiency — antidepressants, sleep aids, testosterone replacement. Hormone replacement clinics profit from synthetic testosterone delivery. Processed food companies profit from continued sales of mineral-stripped products. The supplement industry profits from selling individual nutrients downstream of the actual problem.
There is no industry whose business model depends on telling American men that their bodies are starving for the minerals their food no longer contains. The incentives point in every direction except toward the foundation.
What we built
I started Menerals after spending a year trying to find a single product that addressed this problem honestly and couldn't find one.
What we built
The active ingredient in Menerals is fulvic acid. It is a compound trace mineral that nature spent billions of years creating. Layer after layer of organic plant matter, compressed under heat and pressure across geologic time, slowly forged into a single substance that contains the full spectrum of trace minerals the human body was built to recognize.
It cannot be made in a laboratory. It cannot be synthesized. It can only be found, in specific places on earth where the geology and time allowed it to form.
We source ours from Wyoming. The deposits there are some of the oldest and purest in North America. Once the raw material is taken from the ground, it goes through a pure water filtration and extraction process. No solvents. No chemicals. No heat above what nature already did to it. The result is fulvic acid in the form the body absorbs.
What you get in a bottle of Menerals is a full spectrum compound trace mineral, in the natural ratios the body recognizes, sourced from American soil, processed in America, third-party tested in America. No fillers. No binders. No synthetic vitamins. No proprietary blends.
This is the foundation. The raw materials your body has been asking for, in the form it was built to use.
Click to see supplement facts
What's InsideA compound trace mineral formed over billions of years in geological deposits. Contains the full spectrum of trace minerals in the natural ratios the body recognizes. Acts as a molecular transporter, carrying nutrients directly through cell membranes.
Required for over 300 enzymatic reactions including ATP energy production, cortisol clearance, muscle recovery, and sleep regulation.
Essential cofactor for testosterone synthesis in the Leydig cells. Identified in peer-reviewed research as one of three elements that consistently supported higher testosterone levels.
Reduces Sex Hormone-Binding Globulin (SHBG), increasing the amount of free, bioavailable testosterone in circulation. Supports mineral metabolism.
The 90-day restoration protocol
Menerals is sold as a subscription. The first bottle ships free. Most men feel a measurable shift between day 30 and day 60 as the foundation rebuilds.
The 90-day money-back guarantee is exactly what it sounds like. Run the protocol for ninety days. If your body doesn't shift, return it for a full refund. The bottle costs you nothing.
This is built as a protocol, not a one-time purchase, because restoration takes time. The body doesn't rebuild what was depleted across decades in a week. Most men report the first noticeable shift in energy and sleep within the first month, with deeper changes in mood, drive, and recovery accumulating through month two and three.
The data is uncomfortable.
The biology doesn't lie.
See what's in the bottle →
The trends in this article's opening paragraphs are not destiny. They are documented consequences of a 70-year shift in what American men have been putting into their bodies. The shift is reversible. The reversal starts at the foundation of the male body, with the raw materials biology was designed to use.
Most American men reading this will not act on this article. The data is uncomfortable, the implications are larger than one person, and the easiest move is to close the tab and go back to the life you were already living. The men who do act will find that within ninety days their bodies tell them whether the argument in this article was correct.
The biology doesn't lie. The food supply did. What you do with that information is the only question left.
I built Menerals because I wanted my own son to inherit a different baseline than the one I inherited.
Sources
- Levine, H., et al. (2017/2022). Temporal trends in sperm count: a systematic review and meta-regression analysis. Human Reproduction Update.
- Travison, T. G., et al. (2007). A population-level decline in serum testosterone levels in American men. Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism, 92(1), 196-202.
- Tanaka, T., et al. (2025). Distinct Clusters of Testosterone Levels, Symptoms, and Serum Trace Elements in Young Men. Nutrients, 17(5), 867.
- Thomas, D. (2007). The mineral depletion of foods available to us as a nation (1940–2002). Nutrition and Health, 19(1-2), 21-55.
- Department of Defense (2022). Qualified Military Available Study.