Men worried about low testosterone are being encouraged to start with the fundamentals before pointing the finger at a single food or drink. Testosterone is now one of the most widely discussed hormones in the UK, and interest is rising fast. NHS figures show testosterone-related items dispensed increased by 52% between 2020 and 2025.
Mike Kocsis, founder of the HRT provider Balance My Hormones, said diet can influence testosterone levels, but its role is often exaggerated.
He said: “No single food is going to transform your hormones one way or the other. The effects found in these studies tend to be small, and they depend heavily on quantity.”
Mike has highlighted five common foods and drinks that may contribute to lower testosterone levels in men.
Liquorice is one of the more striking examples. Research found testosterone levels dropped by 26% after 17 men ate 7g of liquorice a day for one week, before returning to previous levels once they stopped. A comparable result was also reported in a smaller study of seven men published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 1999.
Alcohol can also affect testosterone by disrupting the signalling system between the brain and the testes. That helps explain why heavy drinkers repeatedly show lower testosterone levels. Beer is often singled out because hops contain a strong plant oestrogen, although the amount in one pint is small. In practice, the greater concern is usually how much alcohol is consumed and the abdominal weight gain often linked to regular drinking.
Ultra-processed foods have also come under scrutiny. In a 2025 trial, 43 young men followed both an ultra-processed food diet and an unprocessed diet. When calories were excessive during the UPF phase, follicle-stimulating hormone fell. When calories were matched, testosterone showed a downward trend, while blood levels of a plastics-related chemical known to interfere with hormones increased.
Sugar intake may have a short-term impact too. Researchers gave 74 men a standard 75g glucose drink and monitored their hormones for two hours. Testosterone fell by an average of 25% across participants, including men with normal glucose tolerance, prediabetes and diabetes.
A 2021 review in the Journal of Steroid Biochemistry and Molecular Biology found that low fat diets significantly reduced total, free and urinary testosterone. The effect appeared strongest in European and North American men.
Kocsis says the basics tend to outweigh anything on a list like this: “Weight, sleep and alcohol intake have a far greater influence on testosterone than any individual food does. Those are the things worth addressing first.”
He also urges caution about acting on symptoms alone.
He said: “Anyone worried about their testosterone should get tested rather than change their diet on a hunch. The guidance is a morning sample taken while fasted, with a repeat test around four weeks later, because a single reading can be misleading.”
The five everyday foods and drinks that could be lowering your testosterone:
