Starting solid foods

When your baby is around six months old, you need to start giving them solid foods as well as milk feeds.

If you want to start your baby on solids before this age, talk to your GP or health visitor and see the First six months page.

Learning to eat solid foods is a gradual process – at first your aim is simply to get your baby used to the feel of food in their mouth. Remember there is no need to rush. At the start, your baby will still be getting most of their nourishment from breast or formula milk, and you will be breastfeeding and/or bottle-feeding much the same as before.

How to start

When you start giving solid foods, it’s best to choose a time when your baby is calm and alert, and you are relaxed. It doesn’t matter whether you offer food to your baby before or half way through one of your usual milk feeds.

To begin with, it’s best not to give solids when your baby is very hungry and expecting a breast or bottle – they could just get frustrated.

Babies take time to learn to eat solid food. The food may come back out of their mouths at first. This doesn’t mean they don’t like it. They just need more practice. But don’t press food on your baby if they don’t seem to like the taste, or just don’t want to eat. Stop, and try again the next day.

Start by offering a small amount (say a couple of teaspoons), once a day. As your baby gets used to taking food from a spoon and moving it to the back of the mouth to swallow it, gradually build up to offering food twice, then three times a day. Try to give your baby more if they seem to want more.

All babies are different and some babies are much more enthusiastic about starting solid foods than others. If your baby only eats very small amounts, you don’t need to worry if they are still being breastfed frequently on demand, or they are having plenty of formula milk, and are healthy and growing well.

First foods to give

Here are some first foods you might want to try:

• mashed or puréed cooked vegetables such as potato, sweet potato or yam, mixed together with parsnip, carrot, broccoli or cauliflower
• mashed ripe fruit such as banana, avocado, cooked apple, pear or mango
• baby rice or well cooked and mashed white rice, oats or other starchy foods such as maize, millet, cornmeal or noodles
• blended or puréed meat, fish or chicken – well cooked and prepared without salt. Remember to make sure you remove any bones.
• soft cooked and puréed or well mashed lentils (dhal), split peas, chickpeas or other pulses
• full-fat milk products such as yoghurt, fromage frais or custard (choose lower-sugar varieties)

By six months, most babies can quickly learn to chew soft lumpy food even if they have no teeth – just make sure the food is fairly soft.

Give your baby whatever you feel comfortable with offering as his or her first foods, or what your baby seems most interested in, but check the pages on Foods to avoid and Food allergies.

Giving milk

Your baby still needs plenty of breast milk or formula milk until they are a year old. How much they need depends on how well they take to solid foods, and this may vary from day to day. Let your baby decide how much milk they need each day.

When babies are ill, they often lose their appetite for solid foods. For babies who are breastfed, they tend to want to breastfeed more often when they are ill, and breast milk will help them get better more quickly. Being breastfed is also comforting for the baby.

Don’t force your baby to eat solid foods when they are poorly. Wait until they show interest again and offer milk as often as your baby wants.

Practical tips

Here are some suggestions to help make starting solids easier, safer and more enjoyable.

Go at your baby’s pace

Allow plenty of time for feeding, particularly at first. Your baby needs to learn how to move solid food from the front of the tongue to the back of the mouth to swallow it. Food is going to taste and feel different – so it’s bound to take time for your baby to get used to it and to learn the new skills they need.

Make sure the food is safe.

Babies are particularly at risk of tummy upsets, so good food hygiene is essential. Make sure you heat cooked food thoroughly, let it cool, then stir well and test before offering it to your baby. Throw away any heated food your baby doesn’t eat because it’s not safe to reheat it. Don’t refreeze any leftover food. And remember everything you use for feeding your baby needs to be really clean.

Use a cup for drinks

Using a cup is better for your baby’s teeth. Comfort-sucking on a bottle can easily become a habit so it’s best to try to avoid this. If you have been breastfeeding your baby, you don’t need to start giving them a bottle when you start giving solid foods. You can use a cup for any extra drinks from six months. If you are bottle-feeding, when you start giving solids, use a cup for drinks and aim to have your baby no longer using a bottle for milk or other drinks by a year old. See the Drinks page for advice on different types of cup.

Keep a close eye on your baby

Keep a close eye on your baby when he or she is eating to make sure they don’t choke. Take particular care with hard foods such as raw carrot sticks or apple pieces, small round foods like grapes and foods with skin such as sausages. Peel and cut food into small pieces, or lightly cook vegetables such as carrots. Make sure there are no bones in fish before you give it to your baby – you might need to look carefully for any small bones.

Don’t force feed

Wait for your baby to open their mouth when you are spoon-feeding. Most babies know when they’ve had enough to eat so don’t spend a lot of time trying to get your baby to take food – they may learn that refusing is a good way of getting attention. If they don’t seem to like a particular food this time, try again another day.

Encourage your baby to help with feeding

Babies soon show an interest in feeding themselves if you let them. Encourage them by offering finger foods they can hold during a meal (see below for suggestions). Let them touch the food in the dish or try giving them a spoon to hold for themselves.

Eat with your baby

Sitting and eating some meals together with you, and the rest of the family, can encourage your baby to try a wider range of foods. Babies like to copy and they will often want to try what you’re eating. It also helps them to settle into your meal pattern.

Make mealtimes fun

Some of the first words babies learn are for foods – or the word ‘more’. Starting solids opens up a whole new world of learning for your baby. So try to make mealtimes an enjoyable time.

Use home-prepared food

Use home-prepared food when you can. You just need to mash it up for your baby. This way you’ll know the ingredients of the food, and you’ll be getting your baby used to what you eat. Breastfed babies get the flavours of their mothers’ food through breast milk and so they are more likely to take to foods their mothers eat. Bought baby foods can be useful, but don’t let them replace home-prepared foods altogether. Using your own food will probably be cheaper too.

You can offer a wide variety of the foods you normally have in your house, but remember, when you’re cooking don’t add salt or sugar so your baby can eat the food too.

And if you’re using any food products not aimed at babies, remember that many can be high in salt and sugar (see below for information on checking food labels).

You can prepare extra food and keep small portions to use later. It’s important to cool the food down quickly (within two hours), before putting it in the fridge. Then use it within two days. Or if you have a freezer, cool the food down quickly and freeze it, then use within three months. Reheat the food only once and make sure it’s piping hot all the way through, then let it cool before feeding it to your baby.

Check food labels

Remember to check the labels of any foods you want to feed to your baby or to use as ingredients in meals you cook for your baby. Many food products such as sauces, soup, snacks, breakfast cereals and ready meals can be high in salt and sugar. So always try to choose products that are lower in salt and sugar.

Never use foods for your baby that are past their ‘use by’ date.

Guide to solid foods

This handy guide shows you what new skills a baby needs to learn when you start giving them solid foods and the new textures you can introduce as your baby grows and learns how to eat solid foods.

When	New skills to learn	New textures to introduce
6 months If you choose to introduce solid foods earlier, check with your health visitor or GP first. Don’t give any solid foods to your baby before 4 months (17 weeks).	taking food from a spoon moving food from the front of the mouth to the back for swallowing managing thicker purées and mashed food	smooth purées mashed foods
6 – 9 months	moving lumps of food around the mouth chewing lumps of food using hands and fingers to feed themselves sipping from a cup	mashed food with soft lumps soft finger foods drinks in a beaker or cup with a lid
9 – 12 months	chewing minced and chopped food trying to use a spoon to feed themselves	hard finger foods minced and chopped family foods

More tastes and textures

From six to nine months, your baby will be ready to start trying new foods and different textures.

Once he or she has learned how to take soft food from a spoon, you can start to introduce mashed food with soft lumps. At this age, babies will also begin to pick up finger foods, so offer these too.

What foods to give

Offer your baby foods rich in vitamins and minerals such as meat, fish, eggs, fruit and vegetables. (Make sure that eggs are thoroughly cooked until both the white and yolk are solid.) Use some starchy foods as well, such as potatoes, rice, pasta and couscous, or you might want to offer plantain and green banana.

Keep introducing new foods, so your baby gets used to different tastes and to widen the range of different foods your baby eats.

Make savoury meals with a mixture of:

• mashed cooked or soft pieces of vegetables such as broccoli, parsnip or carrot
• baby rice or well cooked and mashed white rice, pasta, oats or other starchy foods such as potato, maize, millet, cornmeal or noodles

Also offer:

• mashed or soft pieces of ripe fruit such as banana, avocado, melon, peach, pear or mango (without added sugar)
• full-fat milk products such as yoghurt, fromage frais or custard (choose products with no sugar or less sugar)

Remember it’s important to keep giving your baby different foods, different tastes and different textures. You’ll be able to use lots of the foods you already cook for yourself. But there is no need to add any salt or sugar. Just mash or cut soft food into pieces that your baby can hold.

Finger foods

To begin with, it’s better to offer ‘sticks’ of food that your baby can hold in their fist and suck or bite using their gums. They may not manage to pick up or let go of smaller bite-sized pieces.

These ‘finger foods’ also encourage babies to chew, even if they have no teeth, and this helps speech muscles to develop. Some babies don’t like being spoon-fed and are happier with food they can hold themselves.

Here are some ideas for finger foods that you can offer your baby right from when you start them on solid foods:

• fingers of toast, bread, pitta bread or chapatti
• slices of peeled soft ripe fruit such as pear, peach, melon, banana
• cooked and cooled: green beans, carrot sticks, small florets of cauliflower and broccoli
• breadsticks or rice cakes (choose lower-salt varieties)

cooked and cooled pasta shapes

Avoid giving your baby sweet biscuits and rusks so they don’t get into the habit of expecting sweet snacks.

It doesn’t matter if on some days they spit out their food or seem to play with it rather than eat it, because they will still be getting most of their nourishment from breast milk and/or formula milk.

From nine months

As your baby gets more used to eating, you can gradually increase how much you give them. So, by the time your baby is a year old, you should be in a routine of giving three or four meals a day. You might also want to offer a healthy snack between meals depending on your baby’s sleeping pattern and how this fits in with mealtimes.

Use a combination of foods to make up each meal, for example meat or lentils, with rice or mashed potato and some vegetables.

For snacks, give nutritious finger foods that are convenient, easy to prepare and that babies can eat themselves. For example, you could give pieces of fruit or bread and houmous. Fruit or vegetable sticks are a better choice than biscuits, which can contain a lot of added sugar and so could fill your baby up without giving them the nutrients they need.

Your baby should be getting used to chewing minced and chopped family foods. They should also be starting to learn to use a spoon to feed themselves.

As solid food becomes a larger part of your baby’s diet, it’s important to offer a range of different foods to give your baby all the vitamins and minerals they need. Try to give some iron-rich foods such as meat, fish, bread or dark green vegetables.

Your baby should still be breastfeeding or drinking formula as before. But if your baby now has a good appetite for solids, and is eating well, you will find they don’t want as much milk.

If you are breastfeeding, continue to offer the breast and let your baby decide how much they need. If you are bottle-feeding, you will find you can stop giving one or two of the daily milk feeds, but continue to give your baby some formula until a year old.

What foods to give
Give some of the following foods every day, minced or chopped.

Bread, rice, pasta and potatoes

Starchy foods, such as potatoes, yam, rice, bread, pasta, couscous, plantain, green banana and unsweetened breakfast cereals.

• Always give your baby these starchy foods with some of the following types of food, rather than giving just plain rice or plain pasta.

Fruit and vegetables

• Vegetables – give with most meals.


• Fruit – give as a snack and with meals.

Milk and dairy foods

• Breast milk or infant formula.
• Milk products (yoghurt, fromage frais, small amounts of cheese, milk-based dishes). Choose full-fat versions and don’t use low-fat, low-calorie or diet versions. Try to choose products with no (or less) added sugar.

Meat, fish, eggs and beans

• Meat, chicken and fish. Meat and oily fish are good sources of iron. (Remember to make sure you remove any bones.)


• Beans, lentils, pulses and well cooked eggs. These provide some iron so give these twice a day if you’re not giving your baby any meat or fish.

You can continue giving your baby the finger foods listed above, plus you can now start including cubes of cheese or sticks of raw vegetables such as pepper, cucumber and carrot.

Vitamins

Once your baby is over six months, you should start giving them vitamin drops containing vitamins A and D. However, if you are giving your baby infant formula, you don’t need to start giving them vitamins until they are having less than 500ml of formula a day. This is because infant formula already contains added vitamins and minerals.

You can buy children’s vitamin drops containing vitamins A and D from your local pharmacy. Check the label to see if they are suitable for your child’s age. Ask your health visitor or GP where else you can get vitamins in your area.

If you or your family get Income Support, Income-based Jobseeker’s Allowance or Child Tax Credit, you may be able to get free vitamin supplements through the Welfare Food Scheme or Healthy Start. Check with your health visitor or GP.

Vegetarian babies

It’s important to make sure that babies on a vegetarian diet are getting enough energy and aren’t getting too much fibre.

So make sure you give your baby two servings a day of pulses, such as red lentils, beans and chickpeas, or tofu, soya pieces or well cooked egg.

The vitamin C in fruit and vegetables might help the body absorb the iron in food, so it’s even more important that vegetarian babies are given fruit and vegetables at mealtimes.

It’s especially important to give vitamin drops to babies who are on a vegetarian diet.

Vegan diets, which contain no foods from animals, can’t easily give babies all the energy and nutrients they need. For this reason, vegan diets aren’t recommended for young babies. If you want to give your baby a vegan diet, you should talk to a dietitian first.