The most dangerous foods for choking children to death revealed by medics

GRAPES are "ideally suited" to block a young child's airway and are the third most common cause of food-related choking after hotdogs and sweets, doctors have warned.

They say the fruit may pose a greater risk than small hard objects such as toys because their smooth surface is more likely to "form a tight seal" in the child's throat.

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While there is "widespread awareness" of the choking risk from small toys, warning labels are routinely absent on some food packaging, warn Dr Jamie Cooper and Dr Amy Lumsden in the Archives of Disease in Childhood.

The Aberdeen-based medics say: "Grapes are a popular food with young children but are ideally suited to cause obstruction of a paediatric airway and are the third most common cause of food-related fatal choking episodes after hotdogs and sweets."

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The pliable nature of the fruit makes it "very difficult to dislodge with first aid manoeuvres", they added.

To highlight the danger the paper cited the case of a 17-month-old boy who died after choking while eating sandwiches and fruit at home with his family.

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Another involved a two-year-old child becoming unresponsive despite attempts to clear his airway with the Heimlich manoeuvre.

Thankfully, he recovered after a paramedic performed a direct laryngoscopy.

The article concluded: "There is a general awareness of the need to supervise young children when they are eating and to get small solid objects, and some foods such as nuts, promptly out of the mouths of small children.

"But knowledge of the dangers posed by grapes and other similar foods is not widespread."

They advised halving or quartering grapes, and similar foods such as cherry tomatoes.

Last week Henry Heimlich, the inventor of the Heimlich manoeuvre, died aged 96.

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