However, most of the time, babies (and adults) can safely gag the food forward well before it gets into the breathing tube or cough those items back out if swallowing fails. Any food could make its way into the breathing tube, especially when not fully chewed. These foods are more likely to enter and get lodged in the breathing tube and be difficult to expel or cough out if swallowing fails.įoods like seeds, whole nuts, baby carrots, apples, pomegranate arils, and grapes top the choking hazard lists-they are challenging to manage in the mouth and could slip into the airway, become lodged, and are challenging to expel without assistance. The more small, round, hard, and slippery a food, the higher the choking risk. What makes certain foods a choking hazard? In general, there are four characteristics of food that increase the risk of choking: Preparing food for age appropriateness makes foods easier to self-feed, move around the mouth, and break down, which decreases the risk of choking. You can reduce the risk dramatically by avoiding high-risk foods with little nutritional benefit (such as hard candy) and appropriately preparing high-risk foods that are nutritionally important. Introducing finger foods to baby between 6-9 months is important, but certain foods and food characteristics are riskier than others. To develop efficient and safe chewing skills, baby must gain exposure to and repetitive practice chewing a wide variety of food textures and sizes. Chewing skills do not automatically appear as baby ages.There appears to be a critical window where introducing chewable finger foods is essential to developing oral motor skills and preventing picky eating from developing as the child ages. Regardless of how they start solids, all babies should be introduced to finger foods by 9 months old.It’s tempting to consider avoiding all chewable finger foods for baby in favor of serving purees, but research does not show an increased risk of choking for 6-12-month-old babies when starting solids with finger foods compared to purees when parents are advised on strategies to minimize choking risk. Building well-coordinated chewing skills will further decrease the risk of choking as a child grows.Allowing baby to self-feed rather than placing food in baby’s mouth appears to reduce the risk of choking.The primary way to reduce choking risk in infants, toddlers, and children is ensuring they are seated in a supported seat with full adult supervision while eating.Reducing choking risk when baby starts solidsīefore identifying which foods and food sizes are most risky and how to modify those for baby, it’s essential to understand the steps you can take to reduce baby’s risk of choking regardless of what you serve. If you want to learn more about how babies learn to eat chewable food, see our video course on starting solids and check out our guide on 25 Foods Never to Feed Baby. Keep in mind that these suggestions mitigate but do not eliminate the risk of choking. Additionally, you can take steps to actively reduce the risk of choking by setting up a safe eating environment, learning what not to do when baby is eating, and carefully choosing which foods to serve. Babies have both reflexes and anatomical protections to reduce the risk of choking as they learn to eat a variety of food textures, shapes, and sizes. While there is no way to completely eradicate the risk of choking during this exciting and challenging time, know that the human body is designed to protect itself. As baby starts solids and gains exposure to new food textures and sizes, they build new motor skills for chewing and swallowing.
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