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Yes, you can still enjoy a mug of coffee every now and then during your pregnancy. Just make sure that you don't have more than 200mg of caffeine in a day. That's two mugs of instant coffee or one mug of brewed coffee. If you regularly have more than 200mg of caffeine a day while you're pregnant, you'll have a higher risk of miscarriage or having a baby with a low birth weight. Babies born with a low birth weight are at an increased risk of health problems when they get older. This 200mg limit includes all sources of caffeine, so as well as coffee you'll need to count teas (including green tea), cola, energy drinks and chocolate. You could also make your coffee weaker by using only half a teaspoon of coffee per mug. Decaffeinated coffee is also a good option and it tastes almost the same as normal coffee. Mind you, taking so much of the decaf coffee makes you consume too much caffeine as well so be moderate. Can a pregnant woman take fried ripe plantain? Yes, the pregnant woman can eat fried ripe plantain. It should however not be taken on a daily basis. Taking so much of this fried ripe plantain means you are eating lots of sugar and oil. These two are responsible for so much weight gain during pregnancy. Remember that the excessive weight gain also means the foetus growing larger thus making delivery harder. Some people may need caesarian sections to be able to deliver very large babies. Taking in so much fat and sugar can endanger the health of the pregnant woman herself; blood cholesterol can go up, blood pressure can go up and weight might increase above normal and acceptable limits. Apart from fried ripe plantain it will do the pregnant woman a lot of good to cut down as much as possible on the amount of other fried foods they consume such as fried yam, fried chicken, fried fish, chips among others. When can the diabetic patient take sugar? Diabetic patients who have a well-structured diet can actually add sugar to their beverages. But once this is done, quantities of other starchy foods will have to be reduced so as to help maintain normal blood sugar levels. This may not be a very easy thing to do. Also the sudden increases in blood sugar recorded after taking simple sugar (table sugar) cannot be prevented if a diabetic patient takes in sugar. Those who do not add table sugar to their beverages and cereals cannot be said to be avoiding sugar at all. This is because the starch in the cereals, the starch in foods such as banku, fufu, yam and rice all gets broken down into sugar. The only difference is that this sugar gets absorbed into the blood a little at a time and not all at once. This is a good thing and a reason why diabetics are advised to consume such complex starchy foods. What is the effect of fried oils on blood cholesterol? Fried and over-heated oils can raise bad blood cholesterol levels. Normally, plant based oils do not increase bad cholesterol levels as animal oils do. But when these same plant oils are over heated, the heat treatment causes some chemical changes which make them also increase cholesterol levels. These over-heated oils are present in foods such as oily stews which we spend so much time preparing; often beginning with oil. Fried foods such as yam, plantain and chips are also a good source of over-heated oils. The black shito which we use to eat Waakye is also a culprit. It is better to eat foods such as yam and plantain either boiled or roasted. Also, it is better to cook stews without oil from the beginning; you can just add a few drops of oil as the last ingredient to your stews. Eat fresh stews such as grounded pepper, kontonmire and garden egg stew even without adding oil to them.