Starting Solid Foods
An important milestone for babies.
Starting solid foods is an important milestone in your baby’s growth and development. It affects their nutrition and helps shape the foods they’ll like and eat in the future.
It’s important to keep giving breastmilk, formula or both (for those who combination feed) while your baby learns to eat solid foods because it’s still their main source of nutrition through 12 months. You can continue breastfeeding for 2 years or longer, as long as both you and your child want to.
The Basics of Starting Solid Foods
Every baby is different. Look for signs that your baby is ready to start eating solid foods. Most babies are ready to try solid foods at about 6 months. Don’t offer your baby solid foods before 4 months. You’ll know your baby is ready when they start to:
- Sit up on their own.
- Control their head and neck.
- Bring objects to their mouths.
- Open their mouths when food is offered.
- Swallow food instead of pushing it back out of their mouths.
If you aren’t sure, a doctor can help you decide if your baby is ready.
Babies should eat a variety of healthy foods with textures that match their developmental stage. Offer different foods that provide important nutrients, are low in salt and do not contain added sugars.
Examples of healthy foods to introduce include:
- Meat, poultry, and seafood
- Vegetables and fruits
- Full-fat yogurt and cheese
- Whole grains
- Legumes and nut- or seed-containing foods
Introduce one single ingredient food at a time from any food group. Your baby’s first foods are your choice. Watch for any reactions and be sure to introduce foods such as meat or iron-fortified cereals (wheat, rice, oat, barley, or multigrain), which are both high in iron and zinc, key nutrients for baby’s development.
Introduce potentially allergenic foods such as eggs, shellfish, nut-containing foods, and wheat when you introduce solid foods. Ask your baby’s doctor about their risk for food allergies and safe ways to introduce these foods.
Be sure to cook and prepare food to provide the right shape, size, and texture for your baby’s development. Mashed, pureed, or strained foods that are very smooth in texture are appropriate starting textures. You can introduce thicker and lumpier foods as your baby's ability to eat develops.
Other Tips
- Respond to your baby’s hunger and fullness cues. Babies don’t feed on a strict schedule, so it’s best to pay attention to what your baby is trying to communicate, not the clock.
- Offer foods more than once. It may take offering a new food up to 10 times before your baby is willing to accept it. Caregivers can also encourage healthy eating by showing babies how they enjoy eating healthy foods themselves.
- Ask your baby’s doctor if your baby needs iron and vitamin D supplementation. Babies fed only breastmilk, only formula, or a mix of breastmilk and formula have different iron needs. Further, babies who are fed only breastmilk or who receive both breastmilk and infant formula need to have a vitamin D supplement, whereas babies who are fed only formula may not.
- Prevent choking. The size, shape, and consistency of certain foods as well as certain parts of a food can get stuck in the throat or windpipe and block the airway. Always supervise your baby when they’re eating, try to keep mealtimes calm, and cut up food into small pieces. For additional choking prevention tips, refer to the CDC Choking Hazards webpage.
- Feed your baby foods that are safe for them. Avoid honey before 12 months of age as well as unpasteurized foods and beverages to prevent illness in babies since these foods can carry harmful bacteria and other germs. Make sure meat, poultry, and seafood are cooked to the proper temperature as well.
- Provide only breastmilk or formula. Avoid milk, plant-based milk alternatives, juice and sugar-sweetened beverages before 12 months of age since these beverages don’t have the right amounts of nutrients for babies. Talk to your baby's doctor before offering water to an infant. Never dilute formula by adding extra water. For additional information on how to safely prepare infant formula, refer to the CDC Infant Formula Preparation and Storage webpage.