Sunday, July 17, 2011

Can a Toddler Eat Food Cooked With Honey in it?

Question

One of the recommendations for enabling a young child to pick up some of the more slippery foods is to coat them with bread crumbs or graham cracker crumbs. While looking for graham crackers at the store, we found honey graham crackers. Considering that exposure to honey can cause infant botulism, I was wondering if the honey graham crackers are safe for him to eat?

Answer

That bit of the Wikipedia article is unsourced, but Health Canada confirms and says that spores may be present even in pasteurized honey. (I never would have thought that.)

I wouldn't expect the cooking of the crackers to damage the spores significantly more than the pasteurization. I can't say for sure that there will be live spores in the crackers, but it's a definite possibility and if you're concerned about this then you should not risk it.

No comments:

Post a Comment