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When can my baby eat yogurt?

Most babies can start eating plain, unsweetened, pasteurized, whole-milk yogurt after they start eating solids – at around 6 months. Plain Greek yogurt is fine too (and the more live cultures, the better for your baby's stomach).

Serve yogurt as is or mix in a favorite fruit – either fresh fruit that you've pureed or chopped up yourself or baby food fruit that's free of sugar and other additives.

A few "don'ts"

  • Don't make yogurt the main feature of your baby's diet in the first year. It should be just one small part of a varied diet of solids.
  • Don't sweeten yogurt with honey for a baby younger than 12 months. Honey contains bacteria that can cause botulism in children that age.
  • Don't offer reduced-fat or fat-free yogurt before age 2 unless your doctor advises it. Babies need the calories from fat.
  • Don't serve flavored yogurt to your baby. Buy plain yogurt and add fruit at home if you like. Almost all commercial yogurt is sweetened with sugar or another sweetener. Check the label: Even "fruit" yogurt almost always contains added sweetener, as does yogurt spiked with vanilla and other flavorings. If there's sweetener in it, leave it on the shelf.

Food allergies

  • If your baby has been diagnosed with a milk allergy or shows signs of an allergy of any kind (such as eczema), don't give him yogurt until you've checked with your baby's doctor.
  • As with any new food, wait at least three days after introducing yogurt before moving on to another new food. That way your baby's body has time to adjust, and you can watch for a reaction.
  • If your child develops a rash around his mouth, seems unusually fussy, or has diarrhea after eating yogurt, check with his doctor. These are all signs of an allergic reaction and may be related to milk protein or additives in the yogurt. 
  • If you add pureed fruit to yogurt, choose fruit that your baby has already tasted and tolerated.

Why yogurt and not cow's milk?

You may wonder why eating yogurt is okay for babies, but drinking cow's milk isn't recommended until your baby is at least 12 months old. Bear in mind that when your baby begins eating solid food – usually around 4 to 6 months – breast milk or formula still makes up most of his diet. Solids gradually become a larger part of it during the rest of that first year.

Also, babies tend to eat small amounts of yogurt. (Unlike milk, it's a food, not a drink!) But if you offer cow's milk, your baby could easily gulp down quite a bit of it, and too much calcium from cow's milk may slow down iron absorption. In contrast, it's very unlikely your baby could eat enough yogurt to make him iron deficient.

And here's another issue: Cow's milk is not nutritionally equal to breast milk or formula. So, you don't want your baby drinking cow's milk in the first year, when he needs the nutrition of mother's milk or formula.

In the first year of life, iron-rich solids are a relatively small part of a baby's diet, and breast milk or formula play a large nutritional role. So replacing breast milk or formula with cow's milk isn't a good idea. But by age 1, your baby is likely to be eating plenty of iron-rich solids, and cow's milk can be a larger part of his diet.

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