In addition to other societal trends about helicopter parenting, I could see parents extrapolating danger from honey to other substances out of fear, out of lack of information.
(In case anyone's curious. Honey contains spores of Clostridium botulinum, the bacterium responsible for botulism/botulinum toxin aka the world's deadliest molecule. People over the age of 1 can ingest honey safely. Infants need time to build up their immune systems.)
Nitpick: it's the gut flora, not the immune system. Adults can ingest botulinum safely because in our guts it gets out-competed by the existing microbes that have been living there for years. Infants haven't developed that gut ecosystem yet, so the bad bacteria can find a home and start making toxins.
(In case anyone's curious. Honey contains spores of Clostridium botulinum, the bacterium responsible for botulism/botulinum toxin aka the world's deadliest molecule. People over the age of 1 can ingest honey safely. Infants need time to build up their immune systems.)