At 7 months old, your baby can eat a wide variety of foods, including vegetables, fruits, grains, and proteins, alongside continued breast milk or formula. Most babies are ready for soft, mashed textures at this age and may even start picking up small pieces of food with their fingers. Breast milk or formula still provides the majority of your baby’s calories, but solids are becoming increasingly important for nutrients like iron and zinc that milk alone can no longer supply.
Vegetables, Fruits, and Starches
The list of vegetables your baby can enjoy at this age is longer than many parents expect: broccoli, carrots, sweet potato, butternut squash, peas, green beans, cauliflower, spinach, avocado, courgette (zucchini), kale, parsnips, and peppers all work well. Cook them until soft and mash or puree to a texture your baby can handle.
For fruit, you can offer banana, mango, peach, pear, blueberries, raspberries, strawberries, melon, kiwi, papaya, plums, nectarines, and cooked apple. Softer fruits like banana and mango can be mashed raw. Harder fruits like apple should be cooked first until they’re completely soft.
Starchy foods round out the carbohydrate side of your baby’s meals. Good options include oats or porridge, rice, pasta, quinoa, potato, sweet potato, bread, and toast. These provide energy and pair well with vegetables or protein for a more complete meal. A serving at this age is small: about a quarter cup of cooked starch or 2 to 4 tablespoons of infant cereal, offered once or twice a day.
Protein and Iron-Rich Foods
After 6 months, the iron stores your baby was born with start running low, and breast milk alone doesn’t provide enough. This makes iron-rich protein foods especially important. You can offer pureed or finely mashed chicken, turkey, beef, lamb, pork, and boneless fish. Plant-based proteins like lentils, chickpeas, beans, and tofu are also good choices. Aim for about 1 to 2 tablespoons of pureed protein once or twice a day.
Zinc follows a similar pattern. Levels of zinc in breast milk are high at birth but decline over the first 6 months. By 7 months, your baby needs about 3 milligrams of zinc daily from food. Meat, beans, and lentils are good sources of both iron and zinc, so they pull double duty.
How Much Milk Your Baby Still Needs
At 7 months, breast milk or formula remains the foundation of your baby’s diet. Breastfed babies typically nurse about 5 to 6 times in 24 hours. Formula-fed babies usually drink 5 to 7 ounces per feeding, roughly 5 to 6 times a day. Solid foods supplement these feeds rather than replace them.
A typical day might look like 3 small meals of solids with 2 to 3 snacks, fitting around your baby’s milk feeds. You don’t need to follow a rigid schedule. Offering something to eat or drink every 2 to 3 hours, for a total of 5 or 6 eating occasions a day, gives your baby enough opportunities to practice eating and get the nutrition they need.
Textures and Finger Foods
Most babies start solids around 6 months with very smooth purees, but by 7 months you can begin moving toward thicker, lumpier textures. Mashed food with soft lumps (think a fork-mashed banana rather than a blended smoothie) helps your baby develop chewing skills. As your baby gets more comfortable, you can offer finely chopped or ground foods.
Many 7-month-olds are also developing the ability to pick things up between their fingers. Soft finger foods like steamed broccoli florets, strips of ripe avocado, or pieces of well-cooked pasta let your baby practice self-feeding. The pieces should be soft enough that you can easily squash them between your thumb and forefinger.
Introducing Common Allergens
Current guidelines encourage introducing allergenic foods early, starting around 6 months, rather than delaying them. At 7 months, your baby can and should be trying common allergens like well-cooked egg, peanut, dairy, and wheat.
For peanut, the approach depends on your baby’s risk level. Babies without eczema or existing food allergies can have peanut-containing foods freely, mixed into other solid foods. A thin smear of peanut butter stirred into porridge or a puree works well (never give a spoonful of peanut butter on its own, as it’s a choking hazard). Babies with mild to moderate eczema should start peanut around 6 months. Babies with severe eczema or an existing egg allergy may benefit from allergy testing before their first taste of peanut.
For egg, offer it well-cooked (scrambled or hard-boiled and mashed), not raw or runny. Dairy in the form of plain yogurt or cheese is fine to introduce as a food, even though cow’s milk shouldn’t replace breast milk or formula as a drink until after 12 months.
When trying a new allergen, offer a small amount and wait a couple of days before introducing the next new one. This way, if your baby has a reaction, you’ll know which food caused it.
Foods to Avoid
A few foods are off-limits for babies under 12 months:
- Honey can cause infant botulism, a serious form of food poisoning. Don’t add it to food, water, formula, or a pacifier.
- Cow’s milk as a drink can cause intestinal bleeding and contains too much protein and too many minerals for a baby’s kidneys to process easily. (Small amounts of dairy in food, like yogurt or cheese, are fine.)
- Added sugars take up space in your baby’s small diet without providing nutrients. Skip flavored yogurts, cookies, and muffins.
- Salt is hard on young kidneys. Avoid processed meats like hot dogs and sausages, canned foods that aren’t labeled low-sodium, and packaged snack foods.
Choking Hazards to Watch For
The shape, size, and texture of food matters as much as the food itself. Anything small, round, hard, or sticky is a choking risk. Specific foods to avoid or modify:
- Grapes, cherry tomatoes, and berries: Cut lengthwise into small pieces, never served whole.
- Raw hard fruits and vegetables: Raw carrot sticks and apple slices are too firm. Cook them until soft first.
- Nuts and seeds: Never give whole or chopped. Use smooth nut butters thinned into other foods instead.
- Chunks of meat or hot dogs: Meat should be finely shredded or pureed. Hot dogs and sausages are a leading choking hazard for young children.
- Popcorn, chips, and crackers with seeds: Too hard and too easy to break into sharp or awkward pieces.
- Dried fruit like raisins: Too sticky and small.
Water and Other Drinks
Between 6 and 12 months, your baby can have 4 to 8 ounces of plain water per day. Offer it in a small open cup or sippy cup with meals. Water at this age is about practicing the skill of drinking, not hydration. Breast milk or formula still handles most of your baby’s fluid needs. Skip juice, sweetened drinks, and plant-based milks as regular beverages.