If you celebrate Halloween,
you’ll probably be tempted to indulge in some chocolate candy today. I’m
handing out Reese’s peanut butter cups to the trick-or-treaters tonight and
I’ve already succumbed to the temptation to eat just one piece. So, is
chocolate okay for nursing mothers? Yes, this falls under the general nutrition
rule for breastfeeding women: everything in moderation (remember, the same
holds true for garlic and spicy foods).
But what about the
caffeine in chocolate? While it’s true that babies–newborns in particular–can
be sensitive to excess caffeine intake by the mother, it takes a lot of
caffeine consumption to stimulate the baby. A mother who drinks more than five
5-ounce cups of coffee (over 750 ml) per day might notice that her baby becomes
active, alert, fussy and restless. A mother who observes those symptoms should
slowly cut back on caffeine to avoid withdrawal symptoms such as headaches.
Keep in mind that in addition to coffee, caffeine can be obtained from tea,
soft drinks, certain over-the-counter drugs and of course, chocolate.
That brings us back to
those Reese’s peanut butter cups. According to Hershey’s information page on
caffeine, a 1.6 ounce (45 gram) serving of Reese’s peanut butter cups contains
4 milligrams of caffeine. Compare that to 9 milligrams in a Hershey’s chocolate
bar and 65-120 milligrams in one 8-ounce cup of coffee.
Chocolate has relatively
little caffeine, but it also has a substance called theobromine that acts much
like caffeine. The Breastfeeding Answer Book states that one ounce of milk
chocolate contains 6 milligrams of theobromine. (p. 600). How about those peanut
butter cups? 30 milligrams. Most mothers can eat chocolate in moderation
without any adverse effects from theobromine, and there is even one study that
said theobromine was found to stimulate milk supply in some mothers.
As always, if a mother suspects a food, she consumes is having an effect on her baby, she can eliminate the food for a couple of weeks to see if the baby’s symptoms improve. In an overwhelming majority of cases, though, it’s fine for nursing mothers to enjoy chocolate and caffeine in moderation.
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