Should I let my baby play with oranges?

Question

I'm a father of a beautiful girl. She is 8 months old.

I started playing with an unpeeled orange, tossing it in the air and catching it. My little girl noticed it and wanted to examine the orange. Just when I was about to give it to her, my wife stopped me and said that I should not give the orange to the baby because the orange was dirty. I said, "OK, let's wash it and it should be OK". She washed the orange. Just when I was to give it to my little girl, my wife stopped me and said that I must not let my daughter lick the orange. I asked why. She said, "because it contains pesticides". I explained that we had just washed the orange thoroughly and that it was safe for playing. Then she said again that I must not let our daughter lick the orange and added that it can cause an allergic reaction. Of course my daughter wanted to put the big orange immediately in her mouth to examine it. I didn't want to argue with my wife so I put the orange away.

So, is it OK if an 8-month-old baby plays with an orange? Is it dangerous?

Answer 1

First the orange is dirty. You solve that, and only then the orange has pesticides. You solve that, and only then does the orange cause allergies. You can bet that if you proved that oranges are hypoallergenic, there would have been another objection.

Your wife does not have a problem with the orange. Something else is going on.

Answer 2

You should buy an organic orange - many citrus fruit are treated with fungicudes etc. to prevent mold in stores and during transport (we consumers benefit only by accident). There is a question over at Seasoned Advice that discusses whether they may be washed off.

That said, if you give your child a washed organic orange - under supervision, of course - I see no reason how this would harm her.
The fear of allergies is imho only warranted if the medical history in the family suggests it and current trends about baby food are that small amounts of different foods are considered beneficial. Note that you are not feeding her the orange (and some children don't tolerate acid fruit or juices well), but if she playfully bites into the fruit she will simply experience some "new" taste. The stimulus of the taste, smell and tactile sensation could actually be good for her.

Answer 3

If you ask me, except if taken out of the dustbin, or if it rolled on a dirty floor, or if you are travelling in a country with different bacteria, oranges are ok to play with and even touch with mouth. If there is a little doubt or objection from the mother, rinsing it should be enough.

Also, there is an elephant in the room here, or two. Firstly, you should not let your wife forbid something and confront you so strongly in front of the kids. That's not doing any good to them. Better do it when kids do not hear. Parents must "agree together" even when they don't.

Secondly, being too paranoid about dirtyness, bacteria, allergies, chemicals, etc., is also bad for the kids. One of the most important thing to build for toddlers is self-confidence. You do not get this if the world around you is full of hidden dangers, like an orange able to jump at your throath and poison you. So, I'd say, remove anything that is really dangerous (like these toilet cleaning chemicals) from the grasp of the kids, and let almost everything else be almost ok, even if it may hurt a bit.

Fear is something we have in our genes, fear of darkness, fear of strangers, fear of unknown foods, etc. I do not think we need to add too many fears to the arsenal (except maybe fear of moving cars). Instead we need to untangle these fears in our kids: nowadays, the probability to meet a wolf in the night is quite low, usually.

Answer 4

Nice question.

I think the fear of an allergic reaction is unwarranted, unless you have seen symptoms indicating that your daughter might be allergic to something. If you fear she might be allergic to oranges and therefore don't want her to lick them, you would have to keep her from everything else, too, because people can have strong and dangerous allergic reactions to basically everything. But since you probably find the completely safe way of testing every substance first before you let your child have unprotected contact with it unpractical, there is no reason why she should be forbidden oranges but allowed to play in the grass. There are other foods than oranges that more commonly cause allergic reactions (like nuts or milk).

As for the pesticides, the "official" recommendation is to wash oranges in warm water before you peel them and to wash your hands after peeling and before you eat them, because they are so heavily treated with poisonous or carcinogenic chemicals, so I guess the best way is to go and buy an organic orange for your daughter to play with. But then, maybe you should begin to think of your own health, since obviously you haven't yet worried about all the chemicals that you have been ingesting from not washing your food nor your hands, while a few minutes of licking an unwashed orange certainly won't do any harm to your child. The few molecules she would have ingested are harmless, but the buckets full that have collected in your system over your lifetime are certainly dangerous. In other words, I wouldn't worry about poisoning my child, I'd rather worry about my whole family eating well. If I can eat it, then my child can lick it. Keeping my kids from things I eat myself seems inconsistent. (Yes, I don't drink alcohol.)

Answer 5

Just do a risk-reward analysis. What is the risk of your daughter playing with one orange once and what is the added benefit of fun and learning with playing with an orange? Many people are ignorant of the chemicals (scary) that are used as pesticides. Even if they are toxic or carcinogenic, they often degrade very quickly, and don't forget the dose makes the poison. Oranges are one of the most toxic laden foods you can buy. That said, your child will be exposed to more poisonous and carcinogenic materials by simply being at a gas station while you fill your car than a lifetime of oranges can provide. Don't let this lead to a lifetime of overparenting, what's life if you spend every moment maximizing survival?

Answer 6

Your wife is correct to be concerned about the pesticides and other filth on the skins of oranges. Sadly, most food these days is produced on large corporate-industrial plantations that use enormous amounts of chemicals and store/transport foods in rat-infested, disgusting conditions. You should validate her concerns about health, instead of telling her that she is "worrying too much", etc. This will make it less likely to turn into an argument.

However, it's also very important that you encourage your child's curiousity about the world - especially when it is curiousity about healthy foods! Purchase organic oranges, and wash the orange well with hot soapy water, and then let her play with it. She will learn to appreciate the taste, and will probably learn a new color too!

Answer 7

Citrus fruit are commonly waxed in order to extend their transport and shelf life. For baking recipes calling for orange peels or grated lemon skin, you need to specifically buy unwaxed fruit. So that's the most likely agent to get into your baby's mouth. Of course, they cannot really use known poisons here, and the wax tends to be bitter and will stop the baby from indulging too much anyway. So I'd not worry about it.

With regard to allergies, it's not helpful to stop kids from ingesting dirt. The longer one waits with exposure to substances, the more likely they will be recognized as foreign and attacked by the immune system.

So you are not doing your kid any favors from having it avoid contact to organic substances that can lead to allergic reactions. It's usually quite early enough to think about stopping exposure once problems become apparent.

With regard to the situation, it is obvious that your wife made a decision and was not letting you change her mind about it, so counterarguments were made up on the fly. Better not argue her into corners if you find out how to avoid it since she might insist staying in worse corners than this particular one.