Do you know how to cut your grapes so they are safe?

Horrible stories have been flying around social media for the last year or so of children choking on grapes, and although I'm sure a lot of children have been choking on grapes for years, its only just started to be something that is highlighted in media and warnings are sent out to parents to be extra careful about giving there children grapes. 

Grapes are even putting so much fear into parents that some are even opting out giving them to there children. Only the other day I was speaking to a mummy of a 15 month old child and she said she wasn't going to give her child grapes until she was older. 

I explained to the parent that she doesn't have to make her daughter go without grapes and she can simply cut them up to make them safe.

On the very same day I was with another parent who started cutting up her grapes incorrectly and I had to show her the safe way to chop grapes up. She admitted she really didn't know that she was cutting them up wrong and had been cutting them like that for ages.

So even though it has been on social media a lot about the safety of grapes and how to cut them correctly, there are still parents out there that don't know how to cut up a grape so a child is less likely to choke. 

This has brought me to decide to write today's post on how to chop up your grapes. Brilliant if you already know how, but if you don't then I hope that I help at least one person learn how to make grapes safer. 

Firstly, this is the wrong way to cut a grape. Grapes are hazardous to choking because of there slippery skin but also there shape. The shape of the grape is the perfect shape to get lodged into a child's throat and its where the grape is at its widest that its most dangerous. So when cut down the middle, although your making the grape smaller, you not actually changing that shape. 

The best way to cut up the grape to change its shape is chopping it lengthways. This makes it a lot thinner and isn't as easy to lodge in the throat. If a child does start to choke on a grape at this size, (as its always possible like with anything), then the grape would be a lot easier to get out by the usual first aid you do to a choking child. 

You can also go one step further like I do and chop them again. It may take a little longer to do but what's time when it comes to our children's safety. The shape now is completely different and so a lot harder to choke on.

In fact I always chop most things up lengthways, apples, carrots, cucumber so if your going to start chopping your grapes lengthways. Why stop there. 

And don't forget, Its always important to be around your child when they are eating any foods, not just grapes.

I hope this helps some people and if you could spread the awareness by sharing this that would be great. 

Thank you for taking the time to read and share.