Taking food abroad - help please :)

[mlr123]

Hi!
second time Mom but travelling abroad for the first time with a 9 month old.
I have bought some ready made meals (like the Asda 10m+ tray type meals) to get us through the first couple of days until we get our bearings but will I be able to pack them in the suitcase? Do I need to declare them? We will be travelling to Mallorca.

thanks ☺️

You can put whatever you want in your checked luggage.

Oh I suppose there might be some rules about meat/cheese but I'd forget about that to be honest. I doubt anyone will rifle through checked luggage for a packaged baby meal!

Have you got checked luggage or just hand luggage?

Both :)

It may trigger the x-ray machine if it has liquid in it, so best to take it out of hand baggage and put it in trays.

We once got caught out by leaving a pork pie in our hand luggage and had to wait half an hour for the security guy to open and check the bag. He said it was the jelly in the pork pie which triggered the machine to flag it up!

My 4 year old has autism and has a really limited diet so I take a full suitcase packed with food for her. I take baby food pouches, yogurts, allsorts! I’ve don’t it loads of times and never had an issue so I’m sure you’ll be fine. I also once ordered the food from Boots in the airport and collected it once through security to save space in our luggage.
Hope you have a lovely holiday! X

Thanks so much that’s really helpful! Do you usually declare it? ☺️

You're fine then. These will need to go in your checked luggage as I expect they're over the 100ml equivalent.

There are random checks. If you’re caught it’s a £1000 fine if you take dairy, meat, fresh fruit or veg into the EU.

Put them in hand luggage, be really clear that they are baby food.

Baby food is an exception to this

I had about 10 of these in the hold luggage and one in my hand luggage and had no issues. The one in my hand luggage needed to go through the scanner.

No I’ve never declared it, it’s never been an issue to be honest

You will have no trouble finding baby food at a normal Spanish supermarket. You also will have no trouble finding suitable food at restaurants, especially if you are staying at a resort. I took my then 8 month old to Spain and apart from some favourite dependable snacks, I brought nothing with me and we ate only from the supermarket and restaurants (non-resort) and were absolutely fine.

Officially you can’t take meat or dairy into the EU. Whether you’ll be caught is a different matter. There’s an exception for baby milk, food need for medical care and food required for the journey for infants. I’m unsure at what age that exception ends, my dc weren’t eating baby food past 8 months or so, didn’t like it