Is Honey Safe for your Infants!

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Is Honey Good For Infants? by Sharon Hopkins

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Enough care and lot of fussing goes in feeding a food to an infant.

This care requires to be taken since the infant’s immune system is still in formative stages and they cannot fight diseases as well as grown children and adults can do.

Honey has been advised for many people, it is sweet not just in taste but also in its qualities, it is a rich source of vitamins, minerals and amino acids, which are normally difficult to get in normal foods.

Therefore honey should be included in food regularly, either during breakfast or a snack.

However, honey in spite of its good qualities has been found not so good for infants below the age of 1 year. The reason being, while honey has nutrition, it also has Clostridium botulinum bacteria, which can cause a type of food poisoning in the infant.

This food poisoning is known as botulism.

Adults and older children have the capacity to fight the above mentioned bacteria easily, however, this is not so in infants.

Infants might get affected with bacteria, this type of food poisoning can result into death if left untreated for sometime.

There are some symptoms through which identification of botulism in an infant becomes possible, these are, infants go through constant constipation, infants are not active, their hands, legs and neck are floppy due to weakness. The infant cannot cry in its normal tone, the tone of crying also weakens due to botulism, the ability to feed becomes poor and the infant becomes lethargic.

All those foods like under cooked food, maple syrup, corn syrup, etc. which can contain botulism spores should be avoided for the infant.

So that he is not contacted with botulism which can create a threat for his life.

However, there are scientists who claim that honey does not cause botulism and that the relationship between honey and botulism requires to be studied in detail again. There are suggestions that the advice to stop honey to infants below 1 year should be reevaluated and that not honey but something else might be causing botulism in infants other than the honey.

Though until it has been proven that honey is absolutely safe for infants, it would be better to exercise care at the time of administering doses of honey to the infant. It would be better if you avoid this sweet for your sweetheart till the age of 1.