Can you drink mushroom coffee while pregnant or breastfeeding? Ask your GP first, and here is why
This is one of the most common questions we get and it deserves a straight answer rather than a reassuring one. The straight answer is: talk to your GP, obstetrician or midwife before adding mushroom coffee or mushroom matcha to your routine while pregnant or breastfeeding. Here is the information that makes that conversation useful, laid out honestly, including the parts where the evidence simply is not there.
Caffeine in pregnancy: how mushroom coffee compares
Australian guidance for pregnancy suggests keeping caffeine under about 200mg a day. That figure covers all sources: coffee, tea, cola, energy drinks, chocolate and anything else with caffeine in it. A serve of Mello Mushroom Coffee or Mushroom Matcha is about 48mg, so on caffeine alone a single serve sits well inside that limit, and lower than a standard cafe flat white, which is usually somewhere between 120mg and 200mg. If caffeine is your main concern, the lower dose is the relevant number, and it is worth knowing when you compare options with your doctor. Our caffeine guide has the full comparison table.
Are mushroom extracts safe in pregnancy? Not enough is known
The six mushrooms in Mello (Cordyceps, Reishi, King Trumpet, Shiitake, Turkey Tail and Lion's Mane) are foods with long histories of ordinary use in East Asian cooking and tea. Shiitake and King Trumpet are eaten as vegetables all over the world. But there is an important difference between eating a mushroom in a stir fry and taking a concentrated extract every day, and the plain fact is that concentrated functional mushroom extracts have not been studied in pregnant or breastfeeding women in any meaningful way. Not because anyone has found a problem, but because those studies are rarely done for ethical reasons. So nobody, including us, can tell you they are proven safe in pregnancy. That is the honest position, and it is why the default advice in this category is caution rather than reassurance.
What that means in practice: ask your GP or midwife
It means the decision belongs with someone who knows your medical history, not with a product page. A GP, obstetrician or midwife can weigh the low caffeine dose, the specific ingredients and your own circumstances, and they may reasonably say any of three things: go ahead, wait until after breastfeeding, or stick to regular coffee within the caffeine limit for now. All three are sensible answers depending on the person. Take the ingredient lists with you. For the coffee: mushroom blend, instant arabica coffee, MCT oil and coconut milk. For the matcha: mushroom blend, blue spirulina, Himalayan pink salt and ceremonial grade Japanese matcha. Both are printed on the back of the pouch and on the product pages.
Reishi and pregnancy
Reishi is the mushroom in the blend that most often comes up in these conversations, because it has been studied in the laboratory for effects on blood clotting and blood pressure. Those are cell and animal findings, not human pregnancy findings, but they are the reason a careful doctor may want to know it is in the blend. Our Reishi research page lists the studies so you or your doctor can read them directly rather than take our summary for it.
Why the 200mg pregnancy caffeine limit exists
The 200mg figure is not arbitrary. It comes from reviews of studies linking higher caffeine intake in pregnancy to outcomes like lower birth weight, and it is set conservatively because caffeine is cleared from the body more slowly during pregnancy, so the same cup lasts longer. That slower clearance is also why a lower dose serve is a meaningful difference rather than a marketing one: about 48mg clears faster and stacks less across a day than a 150mg coffee does. It is still caffeine, and the daily total still matters.
Mushroom coffee while breastfeeding
Caffeine passes into breast milk in small amounts, which is why the same moderate caffeine guidance is usually applied while breastfeeding, with the suggestion of timing caffeine after a feed rather than before. A lower dose serve makes that easier to manage than a full strength coffee. The mushroom extract question is the same as above: not studied, so ask. Some lactation consultants will be comfortable with it and some will not, and either answer is defensible on the current evidence.
Why we will not call it pregnancy safe
You will find mushroom coffee brands, here and overseas, that describe their blends as safe or beneficial in pregnancy. We are not going to do that, because the evidence to support it does not exist, and because a product page is not the place a pregnant person should be getting medical advice from. Mello is a food, not a medicine. It is not made to treat, cure or prevent anything, and it is not made to replace a conversation with your doctor.
If your doctor says yes: how to start
Then the practical guidance is the same as for anyone starting: one serve a day, in the morning, for the first week, and pay attention to how you feel. The matcha blend is the gentler of the two for people who find coffee sharp on the stomach, which some people do in the first trimester in particular. Our guide to mushroom coffee side effects covers the first week honestly, and the 30 day guarantee applies if it does not agree with you.
Mushroom coffee and pregnancy: the short version
The caffeine in a serve of Mello is low, about 48mg, and sits well inside Australian pregnancy guidance on its own. The mushroom extracts have not been studied in pregnancy or breastfeeding, so nobody can call them proven safe, and the right move is to take the ingredient list to your GP, obstetrician or midwife and let them decide with you. If the answer is wait, regular coffee within the 200mg limit is a perfectly good choice in the meantime, and we will still be here afterwards.