Honey is a popular sweetener. Giving a baby honey is not a good idea. We’ll tell you the reasons for this.
Sweet the tea for your baby with bees honey instead of white sugar may sound like a good idea first. Finally, in addition to sugar, honey also contains (too low proportions) vitamins and minerals. Nevertheless, you should definitely avoid giving your baby honey.
The Lower Saxony State Office for Consumer Protection and Food Safety warns that bee honey can be burdened with the Clostridium botulinum pathogen. The dose of clostridia contained in the honey is harmless to adults, but can cause paralysis in the intestine for babies. If the botulism pathogen is in the intestine, it spreads quickly and also enters the bloodstream. In particularly bad cases, the breathing muscles are paralyzed and the baby suffocates.
Babies are only particularly susceptible to botulism in their first year of life. Older children and adults usually have a stable intestinal flora, which gives the botulism pathogen no chance to spread out.
Honey for the baby: also heated dangerous
You are sure that you can kill bacteria through heat. Even with temperatures from 60 degrees Celsius, some typical pathogens can be made harmless. However, this does not apply to Clostridium botulinum. This bacterium is a spore designer who is extremely heat -resistant.
To kill the spores of the Clostridium botulinum bacterium, you would have to heat the honey to 121 degrees Celsius for three minutes. This is not safe at home. Manufacturers usually only heat honey gently on about 40 degrees Celsius. Above this temperature, the quality of the honey decreases rapidly. Vitamins are destroyed and the material (HMF), which is classified as carcinogenic, forms. Honey caramelizes from 90 degrees Celsius. A honey heated for three minutes to 121 degrees Celsius would be caramel.
Not only honey is taboo for babies
The Lower Saxony State Office for Consumer Protection and Food Safety informs on its website that around ten to twenty people in Germany develop botulism annually. Are considered particularly risky foods:
- Incense fish and mild salted fish in vacuum packaging
- Self-boiled vegetable and sausage pans
- Honey (only for infants)
You should therefore always heat up even boiled down canned food before eating. So you kill sprouts and destroy the botulism toxin, which is fully inactivated after a minute at 85 degrees Celsius.
Botulism is very rare in Germany these days. You usually don’t have to be afraid of being infected by honey or canned food. After all, the botulism pathogen cannot harm a healthy intestinal flora in small quantities. However, you shouldn’t give babies honey, as their intestinal flora still has to develop in the first year of life.
Revised by Annika Reketat
Read more on utopia.de:
- Honey-from the beekeeper next door, organic honey or Fairtrade-a comparison
- At a glance honey varieties: You should know these
- When babies have runny nose: causes, tips and effective home remedies
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