At 7 months, most babies are ready for a wide range of soft foods, including vegetables, fruits, grains, and proteins like meat, eggs, and beans. Breast milk or formula is still the primary source of nutrition at this age, but solid foods play a growing role, especially for delivering iron and zinc that babies increasingly need.
Vegetables and Fruits
Seven-month-olds can eat a surprisingly long list of produce. On the vegetable side, good options include broccoli, carrots, sweet potato, butternut squash, peas, green beans, avocado, cauliflower, spinach, kale, and courgette. You don’t need to stick to bland or “safe” choices. Babies at this age benefit from tasting a variety of flavors early, including bitter greens and stronger-tasting vegetables like asparagus and cabbage.
For fruit, you can offer bananas, pears, apples, peaches, mangoes, blueberries, raspberries, strawberries, kiwi, papaya, melon, plums, and oranges. Harder fruits like apples should be cooked until soft. Softer ones like banana and ripe mango can be mashed or cut into pieces your baby can hold. There’s no need to introduce fruits after vegetables to avoid a “sweet tooth preference.” That’s a persistent myth with no evidence behind it.
Proteins Your Baby Can Have Now
Protein foods are important at 7 months, particularly because they supply iron. Your baby’s iron stores from birth start declining around 6 months, making food sources essential. Good protein options include chicken, turkey, beef, lamb, pork, eggs, fish (boneless), tofu, lentils, beans, and chickpeas.
Red meat like beef and lamb is one of the best iron sources for babies because it contains heme iron, a form the body absorbs more efficiently. Non-heme iron, found in lentils, beans, tofu, and iron-fortified cereals, is absorbed less easily on its own. Pairing these foods with something rich in vitamin C, like broccoli, orange segments, berries, or sweet potato, helps your baby absorb significantly more of that iron.
Grains and Starchy Foods
Starchy foods give your baby energy and help thicken purees into more satisfying meals. At 7 months, options include oatmeal, porridge, rice, pasta, quinoa, bread, toast, potato, sweet potato, and chapatti. Iron-fortified infant cereals are a common early choice and provide a reliable iron boost, but they’re far from the only grain worth offering. Mixing cooked oats or quinoa with mashed fruit or vegetables adds texture and variety.
Introducing Allergens Early
Current guidelines encourage introducing common allergens, including peanuts, eggs, and fish, early in the weaning process rather than delaying them. By 7 months, your baby can and generally should have already been exposed to these foods. For peanuts specifically, the evidence is strong: introducing peanut-containing foods early (as young as 4 to 6 months) reduces the risk of developing a peanut allergy. This is especially important for babies with severe eczema or an existing egg allergy, who are at higher risk.
Whole peanuts and peanut butter straight from the jar are choking hazards. Instead, mix a small amount of smooth peanut butter into a puree or thin it with breast milk or formula. The same gradual approach works for eggs (well-cooked scrambled egg, for example) and fish. Offer a new allergen early in the day so you can watch for any reaction, and introduce one new allergen at a time with a few days between each.
Textures at 7 Months
Many babies start solids around 6 months with smooth purees, but by 7 months, most are ready for thicker, lumpier textures. Mashed foods with small soft pieces help your baby learn to move food around their mouth and develop chewing skills, even without teeth. Think mashed avocado with small chunks, softly cooked pasta, or flaked fish.
You can also start encouraging finger foods at this stage. Soft pieces of banana, steamed broccoli florets, strips of toast, or well-cooked carrot sticks let your baby practice their pincer grip and self-feeding. Gagging is normal as babies learn to manage new textures. It looks alarming but is different from choking. Food should always be soft enough that you can squash it between your thumb and finger.
How Much and How Often to Feed
Breast milk or formula remains the main source of nutrition from 6 to 12 months. Solids gradually make up a bigger share of the diet, but milk feeds shouldn’t drop off dramatically at 7 months. A reasonable rhythm is offering something to eat or drink about every 2 to 3 hours, which works out to roughly 3 small meals and 2 to 3 snacks (including milk feeds) per day.
Portion sizes are small. A general starting point is 1 to 2 tablespoons of a food per sitting, though some babies will eat more and others less. Appetite varies day to day, and that’s normal. Let your baby set the pace. Signs they’re done include turning their head away, closing their mouth, or losing interest. Pushing food back out with their tongue isn’t necessarily rejection; it can just mean they’re still learning the mechanics of eating.
Water and Drinks
Once your baby is eating solids, you can offer small sips of water with meals. Between 6 and 12 months, 4 to 8 ounces of water per day is appropriate. Water at this age isn’t about hydration so much as getting your baby used to drinking from a cup. An open cup or a free-flow sippy cup works well. Juice, sweetened drinks, and cow’s milk as a drink are not appropriate yet.
Foods to Avoid Until After 12 Months
A few foods are off-limits for babies under a year:
- Honey can contain spores that cause infant botulism, a serious form of food poisoning. This applies to honey in any form, including baked into foods or added to water.
- Cow’s milk as a main drink is too high in protein and minerals for a baby’s kidneys and doesn’t provide the right balance of nutrients. Small amounts cooked into food (like in a sauce or porridge) are fine, but it shouldn’t replace breast milk or formula.
- Added sugars have no place in a baby’s diet. Babies have limited caloric “room,” and every bite needs to deliver nutrients.
- High-salt foods should be avoided. Babies’ kidneys can’t handle much sodium. Skip adding salt to their food and avoid processed foods designed for adults.
Whole nuts, popcorn, whole grapes, and large chunks of raw hard vegetables and fruits are choking hazards regardless of age. Always cut round foods like grapes and cherry tomatoes lengthwise, and cook hard produce until soft.