Do I have to give each new food for three days in a row?

The three-day rule is folk practice that hardened into something people believe is official. What the guidance actually supports is narrower.

For the major allergens, introduce one at a time, a few days apart. The reason is attribution: if something happens, you want to know which food it was. That is the whole logic, and it is why our menus never introduce two new allergens on consecutive days.

For ordinary foods - another vegetable, another grain - there is no requirement to hold at one food for three days. Variety is actively encouraged, including the bitter green vegetables adults assume babies will refuse.

Where the confusion does real harm

Applied to everything, the three-day rule slows weaning to a crawl at exactly the age when variety and iron matter most. It also gets used to justify delaying allergens, which runs against the guidance rather than with it.

What we do instead

At most one new allergen per week in the weekly menu, never on consecutive days, and the tracker records each exposure so you are not keeping a mental list. Three exposures per allergen is what the printable tracker is built around.