The study, by the University of California, Berkeley, is featured in the journal Human Reproduction. Women of childbearing age are encouraged to maintain adequate levels of folate in their diet to have healthy eggs.
New research shows up to 4 percent of sperm in a healthy man suffer from aneuploidy where they carry either too many or too few chromosomes. The condition is linked to failure to conceive, miscarriages, and children born with conditions such as Down's syndrome, Turner's syndrome and Klinefelter's syndrome.
The Berkeley team analyzed sperm samples from 89 healthy, non-smoking men, and quizzed them about their intake of zinc, folate, vitamin C, vitamin E and beta-carotene.
Folate is either present in diet or obtained from synthetic, folic acid form, which is found in dietary supplements. The researchers found that men who consumed the most folate - between 722 and 1150 micrograms a day - had 20-30 percent has lower levels of several types of aneuploidy than men with low folate intake.
Researcher Professor Brenda Eskenazi told BBC news, "In previous studies, we and others have shown that paternal micronutrient intake may contribute to successful conceptions by improving the quality of the sperm."
"This study is the first to suggest that paternal diet may play a role after conception in the development of healthy offspring," she added.
If future studies verify higher folate intake with lower rates of sperm abnormalities, it may be worthwhile to increase the U.S. recommended daily allowance of folate for men considering fatherhood from the current level of 400 micrograms per day, the researchers said.
The National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, U.S. Department of Energy and National Institute on Aging helped support this research.
