Heather Hartline-Grafton of the Food Research and Action Center (FRAC)* published a research brief last week summarizing the impact of changes to the WIC food packages. The brief provides a quick and accessible introduction to how WIC works, details changes to what foods are now available in retail stores, and outlines the relationship between these changes and participants’ nutritional intake.
WIC (short for the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children) is a federally-funded program designed to improve nutrition and alleviate hunger among lower-income children and their pregnant or postpartum moms. Typically, participants in the program receive vouchers that they can redeem for specific food items at a local WIC-certified store. Different groups (pregnant women, babies, children, etc.) get different vouchers targeting their group’s specific nutritional needs. Unlike the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (more commonly known as SNAP or food stamps), WIC stipulates in great detail which foods are eligible for purchase. Any foods a family wants to buy that are not included through WIC have to be purchased with another method, such as cash or other form public assistance.
WIC has been around since the early 1970s and has played an important role in improving the nutrition of vulnerable Americans since its early days, but the recent changes to the food packages represent a true successful modernization story. As Hartline-Grafton writes, “the revised WIC food packages improve the health and nutritional quality of the foods in the program, increase participants’ choices, and expand cultural food options.”
This is an important change for families. In 2010, I was living in Baltimore as a Bill Emerson Hunger Fellow and researching local barriers to food access for families with very young children. I spent time interviewing parents who participated in federal nutrition programs about their experiences. One dad explained to me that his two young daughters’ dietary restrictions made it challenging for him to get the exact food he needed for them with WIC alone – his children couldn’t drink the type of milk WIC provided at the time. Instead, he relied on the flexibility of his SNAP dollars to buy what they could actually drink. This means he wasn’t fully redeeming the value of his children’s WIC coupons.
This story helps illustrate a tension embedded in WIC’s design: limiting which foods are eligible is an important part of maintaining the nutritional objectives of the program, but it also makes it less flexible for parents, which can be frustrating and cumbersome. Therefore, these modifications to the WIC food package represent a successful change that improves the experience of the program for participants without compromising nutritional outcomes. For example, FRAC cites a study from New York that showed increased consumption of fruits, vegetables, and whole-grains among young children in the wake of the food package changes. A California study showed similar outcomes in nutritional intake. The research on the improved food packages shows that there is value in a program that specifically sets aside funding for healthy food. However, this should not come at the expense of flexible resources that allow families and individuals to have basic security.
Now that WIC covers a greater variety of foods, including types of milk that may work better for children with dietary restrictions, parents can make more personalized choices. On top of the encouraging public health implications of improved nutrition in early childhood, these policy changes send a message of trust and respect to parents, acknowledging that they are well-positioned to make nuanced decisions about their children’s nutrition. Ultimately, this revision to the food packages supports the enduring goals of WIC, while being more responsive to what participants say they want. It’s a win-win.