At six months, your baby can eat a wide range of fruits, vegetables, meats, grains, and legumes, as long as they’re prepared in soft, age-appropriate textures. Breast milk or formula remains the primary source of nutrition through the first year, but solids fill critical nutritional gaps, especially for iron, that milk alone can’t cover after six months.
Signs Your Baby Is Ready
Before offering food, check that your baby can sit up with support, control their head and neck, and swallow food rather than pushing it back out with their tongue. That tongue-push reflex is a built-in safety mechanism, and it needs to fade before solids make sense. Other good signs: your baby opens their mouth when food comes near, brings objects to their mouth, and tries to grab small things like toys.
Vegetables to Start With
The NHS recommends starting with vegetables that aren’t sweet, like broccoli, cauliflower, and spinach. This helps your baby accept a wider range of flavors early on, which can reduce picky eating later. Once your baby is comfortable with those, you can rotate in sweeter options like carrots, butternut squash, and sweet potato.
The full range of vegetables you can offer includes asparagus, avocado, broccoli, butternut squash, cabbage, carrots, cauliflower, courgette (zucchini), green beans, kale, parsnips, peas, peppers, spinach, and swede. Cook everything until it’s very soft, then puree, mash, or cut it into tiny pieces depending on your baby’s comfort level.
Fruits Your Baby Can Eat
Most common fruits are fair game at six months: bananas, pears, apples (cooked soft), peaches, mangoes, blueberries, raspberries, strawberries, melon, kiwi, papaya, plums, nectarines, oranges, and pineapple. Mash or puree them until your baby can handle lumpier textures. Whole blueberries, grapes, and cherries are choking hazards and need to be smashed or quartered before serving.
Why Iron-Rich Foods Matter
Babies are born with iron stores that start running low around six months. Iron supports brain development, so it’s one of the most important nutrients to prioritize when starting solids. Good sources include red meat (beef, pork, lamb), poultry, eggs, fish, iron-fortified infant cereals, tofu, beans, lentils, and dark leafy greens like spinach and kale.
Meat provides a form of iron the body absorbs more easily than the iron in plant foods. If you’re offering plant-based iron sources, pairing them with something rich in vitamin C (like mashed tomato or a bit of orange) helps your baby absorb more of it.
Textures and Preparation
You don’t need to stick with perfectly smooth purees for long. In fact, guidelines suggest offering purees for just the first few weeks, then moving toward mashed, ground, or finely chopped foods. Lumpy textures help your baby learn to bite, chew, and move food around their mouth. Soft finger foods, like a strip of ripe avocado or a well-cooked piece of sweet potato, are also appropriate from six months.
The key rule: if you can easily squish it between your fingers, it’s soft enough for your baby. Avoid anything hard, chewy, or crunchy that could cause choking.
Introducing Common Allergens
Current guidelines encourage introducing allergenic foods like peanuts, eggs, and dairy early, around six months, rather than delaying them. For peanuts specifically, if your baby has severe eczema or an egg allergy, introducing peanut-containing foods as early as four to six months may actually reduce the risk of developing a peanut allergy. Never give whole peanuts or chunky peanut butter, both are choking hazards. Instead, thin a small amount of smooth peanut butter with breast milk, formula, or water, and mix it into a puree.
Introduce one new allergen at a time and wait a couple of days before adding another. This makes it easier to identify the source if your baby has a reaction.
Foods to Avoid Before 12 Months
Honey is off-limits until your baby’s first birthday. It can contain spores that cause infant botulism, a serious type of food poisoning. This applies to honey in all forms: don’t add it to food, water, formula, or a pacifier.
Skip added salt and sugar entirely. Your baby’s kidneys can’t handle much sodium, and early exposure to sweet foods can shape preferences in ways that are hard to undo. Avoid cow’s milk as a drink (though small amounts cooked into food are fine), juice, and any sweetened beverages.
Common Choking Hazards
Some foods are dangerous for babies regardless of how healthy they are. Avoid these unless you modify them:
- Grapes, cherry tomatoes, and berries: Cut lengthwise into quarters or smash flat
- Raw carrots and apples: Too hard; cook until very soft instead
- Whole nuts and seeds: Use finely ground or as thinned butter
- Hot dogs and sausages: The round shape is a perfect airway plug
- Popcorn, chips, and pretzels: Too hard and irregularly shaped
- Raisins and dried fruit: Sticky and difficult to chew
- Chunks of peanut butter: Sticky enough to block the airway; always thin it out
- Candy, marshmallows, and gummy snacks: Obvious hazards with no nutritional value
How Much and How Often
Start with just one to two tablespoons of food per sitting. At this stage, meals are about practice and exposure, not calories. Your baby is still getting the bulk of their nutrition from breast milk or formula. Aim for something to eat or drink every two to three hours throughout the day, which works out to roughly three small meals and two to three milk feeds or snacks.
Watch your baby’s cues. Leaning in, opening their mouth, and reaching for food means they want more. Turning away, closing their mouth, or pushing food out means they’re done. Resist the urge to coax in one more bite.
Water and Drinks
Once your baby starts solids, you can offer small sips of water with meals. The CDC recommends four to eight ounces per day for babies between six and twelve months. Water at this age is just to help with swallowing and get your baby used to drinking from a cup. It shouldn’t replace breast milk or formula, which remain the primary source of hydration and nutrition through the first year.