Foods to avoid giving babies
Once weaning starts, a few foods are best avoided or limited for safety. This summarises NHS guidance; check the source pages and your health visitor for the full picture.
Avoid
- Salt, don't add salt and avoid salty foods (babies' kidneys can't cope).
- Sugar and sugary snacks/drinks, to protect new teeth and habits.
- Honey until 12 months, it can cause infant botulism.
- Whole nuts and hard foods (and other choking hazards), avoid whole nuts under 5; offer smooth nut butters or ground nuts instead.
- Saturated fat in crisps, biscuits and cakes; raw shellfish and raw/lightly cooked eggs not stamped with the red lion.
Reduce choking risk
Cut round foods like grapes and cherry tomatoes lengthways, remove stones and hard pips, and always supervise meals. Sit your baby upright to eat.
If you're unsure
Food allergies are a separate topic, see introducing allergens. When in doubt about any food, ask your health visitor or GP.
Salt: why it matters for babies
A baby's kidneys are immature and simply cannot process high amounts of sodium the way adult kidneys can. The NHS recommends less than 1g of salt per day (equivalent to 0.4g of sodium) for babies under 12 months. Going above this puts unnecessary strain on developing kidneys and can establish a preference for salty tastes that is hard to shift later in childhood.
The tricky part is that salt hides in many everyday foods that adults regard as perfectly ordinary. Bread, cheese, stock cubes, yeast extract spreads, processed meats such as ham and sausages, and savoury snacks like crackers and rice cakes all tend to carry significant sodium levels. Reading food labels is the most reliable way to check: a food is considered high in salt if it contains more than 1.5g of salt per 100g, or more than 0.6g of sodium per 100g. Anything below 0.3g of salt per 100g (0.1g sodium) is classed as low.
Practical swaps make a real difference. Making your own stock at home means you control exactly what goes in. Unsalted butter is a straightforward substitute for standard butter on bread or toast fingers. Mild herbs such as coriander, basil, and dill, along with spices like a pinch of cinnamon or mild cumin, can add interesting flavour to purées and soft meals without adding a milligram of sodium. The goal is not to produce flavourless food; it is to flavour food in ways that work with your baby's physiology rather than against it.
Remember that if you are batch-cooking for the whole family, the simplest approach is to cook the baby's portion first, before adding any salt to the adult serving. This one habit removes most of the risk without requiring separate recipes.
Sugar, honey, and sweet drinks
Added sugar is a concern from the very start of weaning, not because a single spoonful is dangerous, but because early taste preferences are forming and sweet foods can crowd out more varied, nutritious ones. From a dental health perspective, sugar encourages decay in teeth even before they have fully erupted through the gum. The NHS advises avoiding foods and drinks with added sugars throughout the first year and beyond.
Honey deserves particular attention because it carries a specific microbiological risk that is entirely separate from the general sugar concern. Honey can contain spores of Clostridium botulinum, the bacterium responsible for botulism. In adults and older children, the gut environment neutralises these spores before they can cause harm. In babies under 12 months, the gut is not yet mature enough to do this, and the spores can germinate and produce toxin inside the infant's intestine. This is known as infant botulism, and it is serious. The rule is absolute: no honey before 12 months, including honey baked into foods. After the first birthday, honey becomes safe.
Sweet drinks are another area worth thinking through carefully. Fruit juice, even freshly squeezed, adds sugar without the fibre that makes whole fruit so beneficial. It also displaces breast milk, formula, and water from a baby's diet. The recommended drinks in the first year are breast milk or infant formula, and plain water once weaning has started. Cow's milk can be offered as a main drink from 12 months. Sugary squashes, flavoured milks, and fizzy drinks have no place in a baby's diet at any point in the first year.
Reducing the risk of choking
It is worth distinguishing between gagging and choking. Gagging is a normal and protective reflex that babies use to move food around in their mouths. It can look alarming, but it is not the same as choking. Choking happens when the airway is partially or fully blocked, and it requires immediate action. Understanding the difference helps parents stay calm during the inevitable gag without panicking, while remaining alert to genuine choking.
Several straightforward habits reduce the risk of choking significantly. Always sit your baby upright during meals; a reclined position makes it much harder to manage food safely. Never leave a baby alone while eating. Cut grapes, cherry tomatoes, and blueberries in half or quarters lengthways rather than across; the lengthways cut removes the round shape that can form a seal in the airway. Remove stones from olives and cherries before offering them. Raw hard vegetables such as carrot batons are a choking risk; cook them until soft enough to squash between finger and thumb before serving as finger food.
Whole nuts are a choking hazard until age 5. That said, smooth nut butters and finely ground nuts are appropriate from around 6 months as part of allergen introduction. The concern is the size and shape of whole nuts, not nuts as an ingredient. Popcorn and whole raisins are also on the list of foods to avoid until a child is old enough to chew safely.
If you would like to be prepared in the event of choking, attending an infant first aid course is one of the most practical things any parent can do. Learning back blows and chest thrusts for a baby takes under an hour to practice and provides genuine confidence.
When the rules shift with age
Weaning guidance is not static. Several foods that are restricted at 6 months become appropriate at 12 months, and it helps to know when those changes apply so you can expand your baby's diet confidently rather than holding back unnecessarily.
Cow's milk is the clearest example. From around 6 months, cow's milk is perfectly fine as an ingredient in cooking, used in a white sauce, porridge, scrambled eggs, or a cheese sauce. It is also fine in the form of yoghurt and cheese. What is not recommended is offering cow's milk as a main drink to replace breast milk or formula before 12 months, because it does not carry the right profile of nutrients for this stage of development. After the first birthday, full-fat cow's milk is suitable as a main drink.
Eggs can be introduced from around 6 months. Well-cooked eggs, scrambled or hard-boiled, are suitable from this point. Eggs stamped with the British Lion mark have been produced under a scheme that controls for Salmonella, which means they can be given with a runny yolk from 6 months. Eggs without the British Lion mark should be cooked until both the white and the yolk are fully firm.
Shellfish can be introduced from 6 months where there is no family history of shellfish allergy, but raw shellfish should not be given because of the infection risk. Cooked shellfish, introduced carefully as part of allergen exposure, is a reasonable addition to a varied weaning diet.
Whole nuts remain a choking hazard until age 5 regardless of other developments, but nut butters and ground nuts can be introduced from 6 months as part of the recommended approach to allergen introduction. The age-5 rule applies to the physical form of the food, not to nuts as a category.
Frequently asked questions
Can babies have yoghurt and cheese?
Yes. Full-fat yoghurt and cheese are good sources of calcium and protein from around 6 months. They are dairy products but in solid form, so they are fine even though cow's milk as a drink is not recommended before 12 months.
When can babies eat eggs?
From around 6 months, well-cooked eggs (scrambled, hard-boiled) are suitable. Eggs stamped with the British Lion mark can be given with a runny yolk from 6 months. Eggs without that mark should be cooked until both white and yolk are firm.
What are the most common choking hazards?
Whole grapes, cherry tomatoes, blueberries, and olives; whole nuts; large chunks of raw hard vegetables; popcorn; whole raisins. Cut or halve round foods lengthways, and always supervise meals.
Can babies have cow's milk?
Not as a main drink before 12 months, because it does not have the right balance of nutrients for this stage. However, cow's milk in cooking (white sauce, porridge) and as dairy products like yoghurt and cheese is fine from around 6 months.
Note what works
Keep a simple food log in Cubby, what you've introduced, what they liked, and anything that didn't agree, ready for the next check-up.
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