Salt, Sugar and Honey: What to Actually Keep Out of Baby Food

Three things are genuinely restricted in a baby’s diet. Everything else — garlic, spices, citrus, herbs, chilli in moderation — is fine and arguably beneficial.

Salt: under 1 gram a day

A baby’s kidneys cannot process much sodium. The guidance is less than 1 g of salt a day up to 12 months, and no more than 2 g a day from 1 to 3 years. For reference, 1 g of salt is about 0.4 g of sodium — a fifth of a teaspoon.

That number is small enough that it is easy to blow through without adding a grain.

Where it hides:

Food	Typical salt
One slice of bread	0.4–0.5 g
20 g cheddar	~0.35 g
Shop-bought hummus, 50 g	~0.5 g
One stock cube in a pot	4–6 g total
A rasher of bacon	~0.9 g
Two crackers	0.2–0.3 g

Toast with cheese for lunch can be most of an under-1’s daily allowance in one meal.

What to do about it, practically:

• Cook without salt and season your own portion at the table.
• Use unsalted or home-made stock. Shop-bought cubes are the single biggest offender.
• Grate cheese into food rather than serving a portion alongside — the flavour spreads further so less does the job.
• Rinse tinned beans, lentils and vegetables thoroughly.
• Choose ricotta, mozzarella, cottage cheese or paneer over cheddar, feta or halloumi.
• Skip processed meats — bacon, ham, sausages, deli slices — in the first year.

What to use instead: herbs, garlic, onion, lemon, black pepper, cinnamon, cumin, paprika. A light grating of parmesan is a genuinely useful savoury hit where you control the amount precisely. Bland food is not a goal — a baby fed bland food learns to expect it.

Sugar: the distinction that matters

Not all sugar counts the same way, and the language is confusing.

Free sugars — added sugar, honey after 12 months, syrups, and the sugar in fruit juice — are what guidance restricts. The UK recommends none at all under 2 years, and the WHO advises against added sugar in food for infants and young children.

Intrinsic sugars — the sugar inside whole fruit, vegetables and milk — are not restricted. It comes packaged with fibre, water and micronutrients, and it behaves quite differently in the body.

So mango is fine. Dates blended into a pancake batter are fine. Fruit juice is not, and the AAP recommends no juice at all before 12 months, and no more than about 120 ml a day after.

Where added sugar hides in baby food:

• Flavoured yogurts, which routinely carry 10 g or more per pot. Buy plain and add fruit.
• Baby snack pouches and cereal bars, including many marketed as healthy.
• Fruit pouches, where the fruit has been puréed to the point that the sugar behaves like juice.
• Rusks and teething biscuits.
• Breakfast cereals aimed at toddlers.

Useful natural sweeteners: mashed banana, grated apple, date paste, and a pinch of cinnamon, which makes food taste sweeter without being sweet.

Teeth matter here too. Dried fruit — raisins, dates, apricots — sticks to enamel and is more cariogenic than fresh fruit. Serve it with a meal rather than as a standalone snack.

Honey: an absolute rule until 12 months

Honey is different from salt and sugar because it is not about moderation. It is a hard line.

Honey can carry spores of Clostridium botulinum. In an older child or adult, gut flora prevent those spores from germinating. In a baby under 12 months, they can germinate and produce a toxin, causing infant botulism — a serious illness that can cause muscle weakness, poor feeding and breathing difficulty.

The rule covers every form:

• Raw honey and pasteurised honey — pasteurisation does not destroy the spores.
• Honey baked into bread, cake or biscuits — baking does not destroy them either.
• Honey-flavoured cereals, granola, yogurts and snack bars.
• Manuka honey, which is not an exception.
• Honey on a dummy for teething, which is an old remedy that should not be used.

Read labels. Honey turns up in a lot of products where you would not expect it.

If your baby accidentally has honey: most exposures cause no problem at all. Watch over the following days for constipation, unusual floppiness or weak movements, a weak cry, poor feeding, or drooping eyelids, and contact your doctor immediately if any of those appear.

After the first birthday, honey is safe — and it is then just another free sugar, subject to the same guidance as any other.

What is not restricted

Worth stating plainly, because these questions come up constantly:

• Spices. Cinnamon, ginger, turmeric, cumin, paprika — all fine from 6 months.
• Garlic and onion. Fine, cooked, from 6 months.
• Citrus. Fine. The red ring around the mouth is contact irritation from acidity, not an allergy.
• Herbs. All of them. They are the main tool you have for making food taste of something without salt.
• Fat. Babies need a high-fat diet — around half of the calories in breast milk come from fat. Full-fat dairy, olive oil, butter and avocado all belong. Low-fat products are for adults.

The goal is not bland food. It is food that tastes good without salt, sugar or honey — which is most food, cooked properly.