The rule fits in one sentence: no honey before the first birthday. It covers every honey, ours included, whatever its quality, its origin or its price.
Many parents learn this late, sometimes after dipping a pacifier in honey to soothe a teething baby, the way their grandmothers did. Here is what changed.
What a jar of honey can carry
Honey comes from flowers, but it meets soil, dust and air before it reaches the jar. It sometimes carries spores of Clostridium botulinum, an ordinary bacterium found almost anywhere in the ground.
In an adult, or in a child who already walks, those spores cause no trouble at all: the gut flora clears them without anyone noticing. A newborn’s gut does not yet host those protective bacteria. The spores germinate there, produce a toxin and trigger infant botulism.
Cases stay rare. They are also serious: the baby goes floppy, feeds poorly, becomes constipated, the eyelids droop. Hospital care follows, and recovery takes weeks.
No treatment of honey destroys those spores. Not pasteurisation, not baking them into a cake, not diluting them in a bottle. Raw honey, mountain honey at three hundred dirhams a kilo and supermarket honey carry exactly the same risk.
From what age
Twelve months. After that, the child’s gut has filled with the bacteria that do the work on their own. You can then introduce honey like any other sweet food, which means in moderation.
Half a teaspoon does the job between one and three years old. Honey brings around 320 kcal per 100 g, almost entirely as sugars, and the World Health Organization recommends limiting free sugars in children.
One word about teeth, which people often forget: honey sticks. Given in the evening after brushing, it sits on the enamel all night. Serve it at breakfast instead.
What honey really does, after one year
Against night cough in a child over one, honey shows a real effect: better than nothing, comparable to some syrups. A teaspoon at bedtime, on its own or in a warm infusion, is enough.
We will go no further. Honey treats neither ear infections, nor bronchitis, nor allergies. If the cough runs past ten days, if fever climbs or the child breathes badly, a doctor sees what a jar of honey cannot.
During pregnancy
Honey causes no problem for a pregnant or breastfeeding woman. Infant botulism crosses neither the placenta nor breast milk. The only limit stays the sugar, the same one that applies to everyone.