WIC (Women, Infants & Children) Program

WIC distributes a monthly food package to program participants that contains a prescribed combination of target foods. These are solely for the purpose of improving the nutritional quality of the program participantsÆ diets and in such a way are specifically tailored to meet the special dietary and nutritional needs of the participants.

The WIC food package is designed to serve the individual through education of what foods are nutritional. These supplemental foods are targeted so as to serve as an addition to their regular basic resources and diet. The foods provide protein, iron, calcium and the specific vitamins A and C, foods determined to be missing from the diets of low-income individuals. WIC authorizes foods like iron-fortified formula for infants, infant cereal, milk, eggs, iron-fortified breakfast cereal, beans, carrots, Vitamin C-rich juice, tuna fish and peanut butter. These foods are provided through the re

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h and development and to almost all intervening risk factors for delayed growth and development.ö (Institute of Medicine, 2000) It is this risk that created the WIC program. Has the program improved the odds? ôThrough the provision of supplemental nutritious foods, nutrition education and health and social service referrals, the WIC program is expected to improve the nutrition status of low-income women, infants and children by addressing the risk factors for poor outcomes.ö (Institute of Medicine, 2000) The most significant risk factor in assessment is by population. This is also where WIC has proven to be the most supportive and useful in assessing risk. The WIC program has been successful with nutrition education peer based organizations such as La Leche League, which has helped to educate the Latin-American population. Another program has been documented in the extremely rural Forsythe County Iowa. It is called The Best Beginnings. ôThe Best Beginnings program of breastfeeding education through peer counselors has been highly successful. Within six months after the start of the program in 1992, the breastfeeding initiation rate had increased from 10 percent to 26 percent.ö (American Dietetic Association, 2000). O
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