At six months, your baby is ready to start eating solid foods alongside breast milk or formula. The goal isn’t to replace milk feeds right away. Breast milk or formula remains the primary source of nutrition through the first year, while solids gradually take up a bigger share of the diet. Starting with iron-rich foods is the top priority, since the iron stores your baby was born with begin running low around this age.
Iron-Rich Foods Come First
Iron is the nutrient your baby needs most from solid food. By six months, the iron supply built up during pregnancy is depleting, and breast milk alone doesn’t provide enough. That makes iron-rich foods the best starting point, offered at least twice a day.
The strongest iron sources for babies include:
- Iron-fortified infant cereal: Start with single-grain varieties like oatmeal, rice, or barley. Choose unsweetened, dry cereal that you mix with breast milk or formula, and always feed it from a spoon, never in a bottle.
- Meat and poultry: Pureed beef, chicken, turkey, pork, and lamb are excellent sources. Meat might not seem like a “first food,” but it’s one of the best options nutritionally.
- Fish: Salmon, trout, sardines, and other fatty fish provide both iron and healthy fats. Stick to low-mercury varieties (more on which to avoid below).
- Eggs: Fully cooked and mashed or scrambled into soft pieces.
- Legumes: Well-cooked lentils, chickpeas, kidney beans, and split peas, mashed smooth.
- Tofu: Soft and easy to mash, a good plant-based option.
After your baby has tried a few iron-rich foods, you can start mixing in fruits, vegetables, and other grains. There’s no strict order, but leading with iron gives your baby what they need most from that very first spoon.
Fruits, Vegetables, and Other Foods
Once iron-rich foods are part of the rotation, you can offer a wide range of produce and grains. Mashed banana, avocado, sweet potato, peas, carrots, squash, peaches, and pears all work well as early foods. Cook harder fruits and vegetables until they’re soft enough to mash easily with a fork.
Variety matters more than perfection. Babies who are exposed to different flavors and textures early tend to accept a wider range of foods later. Don’t worry if your baby makes faces or spits something out. It can take 10 or more exposures to a new food before a baby accepts it. Keep offering without pressure.
Introduce Common Allergens Early
Current guidelines from major allergy and pediatric organizations recommend introducing peanut, egg, and other common allergens around six months of age. This applies to all babies, not just those considered high-risk. Earlier research suggested waiting, but large clinical trials have shown that early introduction actually lowers the risk of developing food allergies.
For peanuts, mix a small amount of smooth peanut butter into infant cereal or a puree (never give whole peanuts or a thick spoonful of peanut butter, which are choking hazards). For eggs, offer a small amount of fully cooked, mashed egg. Introduce one new allergen at a time and wait a couple of days before adding the next, so you can spot any reaction.
How Much and How Often
Start small: one or two tablespoons of food per sitting. At six months, your baby is just learning to eat, and most of their calories still come from breast milk or formula. Aim to offer something to eat or drink about every two to three hours, which works out to roughly three small meals and two to three milk feeds per day. In the early weeks, one or two solid meals a day is fine as you both get the hang of it.
Let your baby set the pace. Watch for hunger cues: reaching for food, opening their mouth when a spoon comes close, getting excited at the sight of food. When your baby pushes food away, closes their mouth, or turns their head, they’re done. Trusting these signals helps your baby develop a healthy relationship with eating from the start.
What to Drink
Breast milk or formula is still the main drink. Between six and twelve months, you can offer small sips of plain water, around 4 to 8 ounces spread across the whole day. Water is for practice, not hydration. Your baby gets most of their fluid from milk.
Fruit juice should be completely avoided before 12 months. It offers no nutritional benefit for babies and can displace breast milk or formula, leading to lower intake of protein, fat, and important minerals like iron, calcium, and zinc. Skip sugary drinks of all kinds, including flavored water, sports drinks, and soda. Cow’s milk as a drink should also wait until after the first birthday, since it can cause intestinal irritation and doesn’t have the right nutrient balance for babies this age.
Foods to Avoid
A few foods are genuinely dangerous or inappropriate for babies under one year:
- Honey: Can cause infant botulism, a serious form of food poisoning. Don’t add it to food, water, formula, or a pacifier.
- High-mercury fish: Avoid shark, swordfish, king mackerel, marlin, orange roughy, tilefish from the Gulf of Mexico, and bigeye tuna.
- Added sugar and salt: Babies don’t need either. Skip processed meats like hot dogs and lunch meat, sweetened yogurts, cookies, and packaged snack foods marketed to toddlers (many are high in sodium).
- Unpasteurized foods: Raw milk, unpasteurized juice, and soft cheeses made from unpasteurized milk can harbor harmful bacteria.
- Caffeinated drinks: No safe amount has been established for young children.
Preparing Food Safely
Choking is the biggest physical risk when starting solids. At six months, your baby can handle smooth purees and very soft, mashable textures. As they develop, you’ll gradually move toward thicker textures and small soft pieces. The key rule: food should be soft enough to squish between your fingers.
Some specific choking hazards to avoid:
- Round, firm foods: Whole grapes, cherries, blueberries, cherry tomatoes, and whole corn kernels. Cut grapes and berries into small pieces or mash them.
- Nuts and seeds: Never give whole or chopped. Nut butters should be thinly spread on toast or mixed into purees, not offered in spoonfuls or chunks.
- Hard raw fruits and vegetables: Raw carrot sticks, raw apple slices, and uncooked dried fruit like raisins are all hazards. Cook these until soft.
- Tough or chunky meat: Puree or shred finely. Remove all bones from meat and fish.
- Sticky or hard candy, marshmallows, and chewing gum: Off limits entirely.
Always have your baby sit upright in a high chair while eating, and stay with them the entire time. A baby who is eating while reclined, crawling, or in a car seat is at higher risk of choking.
Signs Your Baby Is Ready
Most babies are developmentally ready for solids around six months, but the calendar date matters less than what your baby can actually do. Look for these signs: your baby can sit upright in a high chair with a straight back, has good head and neck control, shows interest in food you’re eating, and opens their mouth when food comes toward them. Babies who still push food out of their mouth with their tongue every time aren’t quite ready. That reflex fades naturally, usually right around the six-month mark.
If your baby was born premature, their readiness timeline may be different. Go by developmental milestones rather than strictly by age.