I thought it might be a good idea to post this, most people probably already know this, but just in case.
There are some foods that can really make babies sick, even kill them, and should not be given to them.
One of them is honey, there is a huge risk of botchelsim (sp) which can actually be deadly if not caught fast enough.
Also ice cream, there is a high risk of lysteria from ice cream, most people think I am crazy for this one, but it really is true, the chances of getting lysteria from ice cream are four times higher than the chance of getting it from unpasteruized milk. Children under one year are very vulnerable to lysteria, as are pregnant women.
Soft cheese and unpasteurized milk also should not be given to babies under one.
Any meat not cooked throughly, or unheated lunch meat (again lysteria)
Anyway there may be others that I don't know about, if there are please post them!

Good post, aside from the ones you mentioned, stay away from the highly allergic foods till at least one year as well like, strawberries, tree nuts, cows milk, egg whites..........I think there is more I'm just blanking out!

I was told give baby whole milk after 6months old.

Karo syrup -- lot of people give this to their babies if they're constipated, but if you used Karo that's sitting back in the cupboard that hasn't been used for awhile, it can get mold in it, can also run the risk of botulism.

Choking hazards - Hot dogs, Popcorn, chicken mcnuggets.

It's also good to check imported snacks for hidden ingredients. Most packages made around here list potential allergens but that's not always the case with things imported in. We have some chocolate snacks from Japan that I love that actually contain fish oil as well as peanut oil in the shortening, not listed on package, and since I have a cousin with a deadly seafood and peanut allergy we won't be giving DS any seafood or peanuts for a long time. I would not have known it was in there if I hadn't looked it up.

I was told to give my daughter whole milk after 9 months, she is 11 months now and perfectly fine.

I think eliminating foods is what causes these allergies. They say not to eliminate anything or avoid anything unless there is a history if a certain allergy in your family or the child shows signs of an allergy with consumption of that item. When I was pregnant, everyone said avoid nuts/peanut butter, seafood.........I ate nuts like crazy and had occasional seafood (fully cooked) when it was available. I will not give my baby honey, however, since that has nothing to do with allergies.

Because DS has cystic fibrosis and requires more calories, fat and salt his doctor told us to grind up whatever we were having after he turned 6 months. Still gave him formula and did so until he was 1 1/2 years old just to give him more nutrition.

So DS was eating ground up tuna casserole, fish sticks, hamburger hot dish... When he was about 8 months old he got on a yogurt kick, so we were going thru a LOT of yobaby or I added cream to regular yogurt for extra calories.

I think the key is avoiding allergy type things such as nuts and strawberries and dangerous things like honey. It's not as if you're going to sit down and start your infant on a hamburger, fries and a shake --- it would most likely be a taste of something here and there, as you would when you first start baby food. A few spoonfuls of carrots or squash, rice cereal.... Their main nutrients are still derived from formula or breast milk

never heard the ice cream thing, will have to ask about that, I have been giving ds vanilla ice cream in small amounts, not but half tsp total, whenn we have it for dessert, but only vanilla

thanks very much for the thoughtful post. please tell me if i am being crazy... i know that strawberries is a no-no, why then do they have gerber 2nd and 3rd foods with strawberries? my mom is allergic to them, so we stay away. but don't you think that is wierd? and also those meat stick things, they are basically hot dogs. my husband just asked me about peanut butter as he gave our 10 month old some of his PBJ. i told him he was probably too young, but the small amount he got seemed to be ok. he also loves icecream, i had no idea about the dangers! he is starting to ween to cows milk and seems to really like it.

as for my add- syrup, it has the same pollen dangers as honey (not the dangers of botilism (or however you spell it) :p

Yeah I stay away from honey too.

We give DS hot dogs, but we cut them in to real skin lengthwise, bitewise pieces. Now that DS is old, we make octopus out of the hot dog. Slice about 6-8 skinny sections, leaving an uncut chunk on the top. Throw it in boiling water and it makes a hot dog octopus.

Meat sticks always scared me 'cuz they looked too dangerous. Ad far as peanut butter, there is the risk of allergy because of nuts, but the concern we had was with choking -- too big of a bite. I usually put a tiny bit on the end of a baby spoon or as he got older, dipped pretzels in it.

My MIL is a nurse and said one of the top choking hazards is popcorn. The other thing I avoided until DS was about 2 1/2 - 3 was fruit snacks. Some of those are choking size

I heard ice cream was a good way to introduce them to whole milk.

You can look at the CDCs website for info on the icecream. I know it sounds nuts, but I swear it's really true! As for the allergy thing, I was reading about this recently, that most allergies show up in white, middle to upper class families. That other races and lower class families don't have that many occurences. The study said the reason was those groups without allergies don't introduce foods one at a time, they just give the babies whatever they are eating.
I didn't do a really good job at introducing the foods one at a time. I did with the strawberries, I don't know why they make baby food strawberries either, I thought that was weird too, lol.
Anyway, the foods we are mainly staying away from are the ones that carry the risk for illness, ice cream, soft cheeses, deli meats or hot dogs that have not been cooked after being taken out of the package, honey. I had forgotten about Karo syrup, it does carry a risk of botuclism, just like honey.
Anyway, the things they can choke on are amazing, DS choked on the tiniest little piece of cracker you have ever seen!