“No Honey Under One”…But Where Might It Be Unexpectedly?

If you haven’t heard, honey under one is a no-no—even if it’s cooked in some way, such as baked into bread, or heated in a winter beverage. The bacteria that is sometimes found in honey and that causes infant botulism live in heat-resistant, protective spores. And heating or cooking honey in typical home and/or commercial settings does not kill the bacteria. As such, we should avoid giving any food that has honey as an ingredient to infants under the age of one.

And it’s getting trickier and trickier to easily tell which store-bought foods and condiments contain honey. It might once have been possible to just read the name of the food and know if it had honey. Examples of this include honey nut cheerios, honey graham crackers, honey whole wheat bread, honey mustard, honey Greek yogurt, etc. However, honey is growing in popularity, both for its own merits as well as for use as a sugar replacement ingredient, both in home cooking and commercial foods. And so, it can be a bit harder to avoid honey than it might once have been.

Food Business News did a piece on market research surrounding honey. They discovered that of the honey sold in the United States, “40% was sold at retail as packaged honey”. Nothing too surprising there. Honey is being sold as honey. In a jar. On a shelf. Cool. Expected. But, an additional 30% of the honey went into packaged foods with beverages being the leading packaged food recipient of that honey. And that’s not even including beer, which was separated out from other beverages and listed as the number two recipient. Surprised by that? So was I and so were the researchers. “We were surprised to learn,” they said, “that beverage was the leading food processing application, with packaged cold beverages being No. 1 followed by beer being No. 2.” I would have thought bread or granola/cereal products would have topped the list but “[c]ereal, both hot and ready-to-eat, came in third, followed by bread and doughs. Granola, snack and nutrition bars were fifth” (Berry, 2016).

If nothing else, that information tells me to expect honey in foods and beverages where I might not have initially expected it to be. With that in mind, let’s review a few, sometimes surprising, kid-friendly foods in which honey can be found.

Honey in Bread Products

Bread and bread products are a very common place to find honey. Growing up, my mom made homemade bread on the regular. And honey was the sweetener of choice…both for topping the fresh, warm-out-of-the-oven slice as well as baked into the bread itself. Mmmm. Sooooo gooooooood!! I loved that bread then and I love it now! Nothing beats fresh homemade bread and the honey (in it and on it) was just the perfect extra touch of happiness.

While some bread, such the standard grocery store sandwich bread loaf, will use sugar in their loaves, many others will use honey. This is more common in family-run, small business, and/or local bakery breads. In fact, many such bakeries pride themselves on using locally-sourced honey in their bread, even if they don’t label their bread as “honey wheat” or “honey [whatever the loaf is]”.

One example of this is found in the Prairie Grain Bread Company, based in Virginia, USA. They pride themselves on using all-natural ingredients, making bread from scratch daily, and producing natural and healthy bread products. Their website states that none of their breads contain refined sugar. In their label (below) for sour dough bread, you’ll notice that nothing in the name of the bread suggests honey. Yet, there it is, in the ingredient list. Honey.

It’s not the kind of bread that I’d typically look for honey as an ingredient. For some reason, in my head, the “honey” label goes with various kinds of whole wheat bread, not sour dough. (That might just be my ignorance showing though…). Additionally, up until last year, even if it had been printed in bright colors on the label that it contained honey, I still wouldn’t have thought twice about feeding it to my baby. I just didn’t know that cooked honey was still a no-no for babies. But, a now older and wiser mama-me will look twice at similar bread product labels before serving it to any less-than-12 months old baby.

Such a lovely ingredient in such lovely food. Just not for your baby.

Honey in Cereals and Snack Foods

Right up the same alley as bread and bread products are cereals and snacks foods. These might not be your first choice of foods for your newest eaters but probably will constitute at least some of their diet as they become more experienced infant eaters. And, if you’re anything like me, you might unthinkingly give your baby bites of food from whatever it is you’re currently eating–which is often cereal, bars, and crackers. Nature Valley Breakfast Biscuits, Honey Graham Crackers, granola…. Again, just give the ingredient list a quick look before passing a bite on to baby.

Also, in this category are the many finger foods that are made at home and used for teething relief or for baby-led weaning style meals. If you’re making these foods yourself, obviously you’d choose ones without honey in them for your infants. But you might not think about it when offered one at a play date or grandparent’s house.

For example, here are some healthy blueberry muffins. They’re the kind of food that many people make to give their new eaters…soft, easy to chew, easy to self-fed, with healthy ingredients. You wouldn’t make them yourself because you’ll see honey as an ingredient. However, a well-meaning but uninformed friend might provide them for a potluck picnic at the park. Here’s another example, I think these protein balls are delicious! And so does my toddler. I have a stash in my freezer right now that I’ll pull out for a quick snack. They’re soft, bite-sized, easy for little fingers to pick up, and full of goodness so it’s easy to forget that I should not also give them to my learning-to-eat-exactly-this-kind of-food-but-still-under-a-year baby. Ya know?

Honey in Yogurt

Dairy is such an easy food to feed to babies. It is generally soft enough for baby to eat without much additional preparation. However, nowadays, there is much debate surrounding the pros and cons of dairy (for babies OR for adults) and there is some confusion regarding the “no milk under one” rule as well.

I’ll let you do your own research about that first concern. You can decide what you want to feed yourself and your family. And I’ll dive into the second concern in my final post in this “No Honey Under One” series. In it, I’ll discuss the differences between the “No Honey Under One” rule and the what is really meant with the “no milk under one” rule. In the meantime, just know that it’s ok to give your baby dairy, just don’t substitute cow’s milk in place of their breastmilk or infant formula as a main source of nutrition.

When you’re picking dairy items to feed your baby, you’ll most likely gravitate towards yogurts. They’re perfect for younger infants due to their smooth textures and they have lots of protein, Greek yogurt especially. In addition to just straight up feeding my kids yogurt, I use it in smoothies (for myself and the kids) and sometimes in baking baby muffins and other bread products. So yummy.

But, heads up, several yogurt brands use honey and not all of them have it advertised on the product’s front. One example of this, I recently discovered, is Noosa yogurt. As pictured above, flavors besides “honey flavored”, such as this raspberry, also have honey listed in the ingredients. According to Food Business News, it is common for both yogurt and ice cream to use honey for “natural sweetness and distinct flavor”, particularly with Greek Yogurts where it is “complementary to [its] tartness”(Berry, 2016). So, pay attention to your preferred yogurt brand. If it has honey, switch it out for a different brand until your little one is a little less little.

As a side note: anybody else love Noosa yogurt?!? My sister and I both had the pleasure of trying it for the first time while we were on a trip. We looked at each other with wide eyes and couldn’t believe our taste buds! Soooo good! (This isn’t sponsored by the way). 😉

Honey as Medication

If you’re not paying close attention, you can miss the difference between the following two medications. Both are children’s cough syrup. Both by Zarbee’s. But one is labeled for children ages 1-12 years and one is labeled for infants 2+ months of age. Or, you might be thinking, as you pick one off the shelf, that Zarbee’s cough syrup is like children’s ibuprofen, which can safely be given to infants with the appropriate unit dose conversions.

However, this medication is not convertible like children’s ibuprofen. Why not? One reason: the version of Zarbee’s cough syrup that is intended for older children has honey in it. Honey has been used for generations as a remedy for sore throats. So, that just makes sense that it would be the primary ingredient here as well. In the infant version of this syrup, the honey is swapped out for agave, a syrup similar to honey in texture and sweetness but without the threat of infant botulism. In this case, you’d very much want to make sure that you chose the medicine labeled “baby” to give to your infant.

Zarbee’s cough syrups are fairly popular in the children’s world of medication but there are many other medicines out there, especially home remedies and Eastern medicines, that feature honey. Be wise and double check the ingredients before feeding it to your infant.

Honey in Sauces

Who doesn’t love a good sauce? It can be the final something-something that takes your meal to the next level and ties it all together. Cultures around the world all put sauces of some kind on practically everything. So yummy. And, just like everything else in this post, many sauces have honey in them. Even sauces that historically might not have used honey are now moving in that direction. I’ve also noticed that many sauces that might not have honey in them on the store shelf, call for honey when you make it at home, particularly Asian-style sauces such as this teriyaki sauce, this cashew chicken sauce, and this sesame chicken sauce.

Again, if you’re cooking this yourself, you’ll know not to pick that particular recipe or to not give the sauce to your baby. But you might not know to ask about it when eating out or with friends and family. So, consider this your heads up! Ask!

---

My goal in writing this post isn’t to make you paranoid about where honey might be hiding or which relatives might accidentally serve your child a honeyed food. Not my goal at all. If that’s how you’re feeling, shake it off and take a deep breath. While it’s true that honey is in more products than we might initially think it is, there are still many, many foods that we can feed our babies while avoiding honey.

The point of this post is to highlight the food subgroups that are more likely to contain honey and thus be the food groups you can more diligently monitor and make wiser, baby-friendly purchases. And those moments at the potluck? Well, hopefully this post gave you the insight you need to look at a sauce/bread/whatever-it-is and realize that honey could be involved in its creation. Then, a simple question about ingredients can make sure you’re headed in the right direction for whether or not to put it on baby’s plate.

---

This is Part Two in my three-part series on the “No Honey Under One” rule. Watch for my follow-up post for a discussion of how the “No Honey Under One” rule differs from the often misunderstood recommendation not to serve milk under one. And, if you haven’t already read it, you can go back and read the previous post, Part One: Exploring the “Why” Behind the “No Honey Under One” Rule.

Hello! I’m Briana!