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How to Safely Offer Peanuts to Your Baby

Has your baby tried peanut protein yet?

If not, you might consider bumping peanut up on your priority list of protein foods to offer.

The landmark LEAP trial (Learning Early About Peanut Allergy) and resultant changes to guidelines for introduction of peanut to babies now emphasize the importance of early introduction of peanut protein to help reduce the risk of peanut allergy down the road.

This “peanut early and often” stuff can be a bit challenging for parents of early eaters…and that is because thick globs of nut butter and intact nuts are inappropriate for babies as they pose a choking risk.

But there ARE a few ways you can safely introduce peanut protein to your baby beginning at 6 months of age (...plus when your baby is showing the other reliable signs of readiness to eat):

Thinned out nut butter offered from a pre-loaded spoon…you can do this mixing unsalted, unsweetened peanut butter with formula, breastmilk, full fat/whole milk unsweetened yogurt or unsweetened applesauce (...if using milk/yogurt make sure baby has had exposure to cow’s milk protein - another allergenic food - a few times previously without reaction before trying along with peanut for the first time).
Peanut flour incorporated into a simple baby-led weaning pancake…try 1 egg + 1 smashed banana + 1 cup of peanut flour (...if using egg, make sure baby has had exposure to egg - another allergenic food - a few times previously without reaction before trying align with peanut for the first time). Avoid peanut powders with added sugar or artificial sweeteners. Only ingredient should be “peanuts”.
Baby peanut puffs - this is a low mess, no stress way to safely offer your baby peanuts. There are lots of brands out there, but I prefer the Puffworks Baby Peanut Puffs for baby-led weaning.

The Puffworks Baby Peanut Puffs work great for baby-led weaning for a few reasons:

They have no added sugars (other brands do add sugars and AAP recommends no added sugars for children under 2)
They have only have a smidge of sodium for preservative (I look for <100 mg sodium/serving of foods for babies and these have 35)
They are the softest peanut puffs on the market, so they dissolve easily in your baby’s mouth, safe to eat before teeth
The Puffworks Baby Peanut Puffs are the perfect shape for baby-led weaning: about the size of your adult pinky finger so baby can easily pick up and self-feed.

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Puffworks also recently came out with a line of Almond Baby Puffs.

I use the Puffworks Baby almond puffs as a way to introduce a separate allergenic food category: tree nuts.

Heads up that the Puffworks Baby Almond Puffs do contain peanut protein…so be sure to do the peanut puffs first a few times without reaction before trialing the baby almond puffs.

If you’re based in the United States, I do have an affiliate discount code for Puffworks to try out their Baby Peanut and Baby Almond puffs at a discount (they also ship to Canada but I’m sorry this code does not work there).

Use the code BABYLED at checkout at puffworks.com to apply that discount. I think getting one case of Baby Peanut and one case of Baby Almond is a great way to get 2 of the Big 9 allergenic foods knocked off your baby’s list (peanut and tree nut).

SHOP PUFFWORKS DISCOUNT CODE BABYLED

If you’re interested in more info about introducing the rest of the allergenic foods to your baby, I have an allergenic foods digital course that walks you through each of the BIG 9 allergenic foods (those are the 9 foods that account for about 90% of food allergy and that you can feed to your baby before turning 1.)

This is an online allergenic foods introduction course that I co-teach with Dr. Ron Sunog. Dr. Sunog is a pediatrician with a special interest in using food to prevent food allergy and he is also the medical advisor to Puffworks.

To check out our full allergenic introduction course, with all of the info on how to safely introduce these foods plus multiple BLW recipes for each allergenic food, click here.