Can You Drink Starbucks Refreshers When You’re Pregnant?

Getting pregnant makes you reassess a lot of things you normally eat and drink without a second thought. Can you order your favorite sandwich from Subway, and which kinds of sushi are considered safe now? If you’re a Starbucks fan, you may also find yourself wondering about drinking Starbucks Refreshers while pregnant. Some customers may not realize these colorful, juice-based beverages contain caffeine, which you should be mindful about consuming too much of if you’re expecting.

If you’ve never tried one, Starbucks Refreshers come in a few flavors: strawberry acai, mango dragonfruit, pineapple passionfruit, and the infamous Pink Drink and Dragon Drink. You can get them mixed with lemonade or frozen, but essentially, they’re all fruit juice-based, iced drinks that contain green coffee bean extract. This ingredient imbues the beverage with a little hit of caffeine.

How much caffeine can you have while pregnant?

Most OB-GYNs will tell you that you can have caffeine in moderation while pregnant — less than 200 milligrams per day, according to the Mayo Clinic — but that the less you consume, the better. If you order a grande Starbucks Refresher, it will contain between 45 and 50 grams of caffeine, depending on the flavor you choose. That’s about as much as a 6-ounce cup of black tea. All of Starbucks’ beverages have their caffeine content listed in the nutritional information on their website if you’re curious about a certain flavor.

“Two hundred milligrams per day is what you should be drinking,” says Dr. Joanna Dalton Ayoung, M.D., OB-GYN at Orlando Health Physician Associates. She says this amounts, roughly, to one 8-ounce cup of brewed coffee. Drinking too much caffeine in pregnancy can be harmful, she says.

“Caffeine could be dehydrating. When somebody is pregnant, they start to feel crampiness when the uterus is lacking for water,” says Ayoung. “The other thing is, there are some studies that show that high doses of caffeine in pregnancy can lead to fetal growth restrictions, and that would lead to the baby being small.”

If you are someone who experiences heart palpitations after drinking caffeine, you should probably steer clear of the stuff altogether in pregnancy. “Some people have palpitations and feel like their heart is racing when they drink caffeine. If that’s you, then pregnancy could even exacerbate that,” says Ayoung. Or, if your doctor has expressed concerns that your baby isn’t growing well, you may also want to cut your caffeine intake just to be safe.

How much sugar can you have a day when pregnant?

There are no strict rules about how much sugar you can have in a day during pregnancy, Ayoung says. “We do tell people to be careful of sugary drinks, like sodas. I would say the Refresher falls in that bracket because it has sugars, but there’s no guideline on how many grams of sugar you should be drinking every day in pregnancy.”

There are also plenty of caffeinated beverages on the market sweetened artificially, Ayoung points out. If you’re concerned about your sugar intake, she says you can consume artificial sweeteners while pregnant.

So, you may have to let go of baked brie and prosciutto for the time being, but you can absolutely still enjoy your favorite Starbs Refresher while you’re pregnant (as long as you’re doing so in some sort of moderation, of course).

Expert:

Dr. Joanna Dalton Ayoung, M.D., OB-GYN at Orlando Health Physician Associates