Bread has plenty of nutritional benefits and contains protein, fibre, B vitamins, iron and zinc. Bread can be offered to your baby from 6 months but just test it first as it’s a main allergen (wheat).The main things to look for when choosing bread for your baby is:⠀

- lowest sodium as possible. Always a good rule of thumb is to look for 120mg/100g for babies.

- no seeds inside or outside the bread. Seeds can potentially lodge in your baby’s throat. So avoid bread such as multigrain bread and seeds sprinkled in the outside.

- When offering bread to your baby always toast it first. Bread can be quite tacky and form a ball in your baby’s throat making it a choking risk. Tackiness of bread can also stick to the roof of your baby’s mouth when they eat it. This is easily solved if you toast the bread.

- Choosing a bread with minimal ingredients as possible e.g. additives. ⠀

So, what brands are good choices?⠀

- Bill’s organic sourdough is a great option. This brand is stocked throughout NSW and can be found at Harris Farm market. The sodium content is around 230mg/100g for their breads.

- Edwards sourdough is an excellent choice and can be found in the supermarket. They have a few different varieties and sodium is 237mg/100g.

⠀- Pure life brand breads have around 15-20mg/100g of sodium for most of their breads. This brand is found nationally in health food stores. There is a stockist lookup locator on their website.

- Supermarket bakery breads (simple freshly baked wholemeal or white) are absolutely fine to use if you can’t get your hands on the other brands. The other brands are quite expensive per loaf and may not be as accessible as supermarket bread. The sodium is around 350mg/100g.⠀

One last thing, you can always swap up wholemeal bread with white bread because both have benefits for your baby. Wholemeal bread has a bit more fibre and white bread has a bit more energy. This is a great example why variety is key!