It might be advisable to avoid caffeine all together when you’re expecting, according to a spate of recent studies - meaning that even moderate coffee intake or a simple bar of chocolate could soon be off the menu for mums-to-be. Two new studies published in February and March this year highlight the potentially harmful impact of caffeine consumption in pregnancy. The first, conducted by the University of Rochester Medical Center, found that caffeine consumed during pregnancy can change important brain pathways that could lead to behavioural problems such as ADHD later in life. The second study, by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development and published in JAMA Open Network on 25 March 2021, found that women who drank as little as half a cup of coffee per day on average gave birth to smaller babies than pregnant women who did not consume caffeinated beverages.