A mother seeks healthy changes in US food aid program
WASHINGTON -- As a mother who got food aid for her children and herself, Maria Prince picked up federally funded juice and cheese.
As a doctor, Prince now wants the menu changed.
The Women, Infants and Children program for low-income families should deliver healthier choices, meaning less juice and cheese and more fruits and vegetables, Prince said last week.
Prince qualified for the benefits as an unemployed mother of three children who were below the program's cutoff age of 5. She got foods approved by program officials as supplements to the family's own purchases so the family got all the nutrition they needed.
The aid ended in June, when Prince and her husband, an unemployed software engineer, left the Jacksonville, Fla., area and moved to suburban Baltimore, where she is a medical resident.
Prince said her salary at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health is low enough to let her qualify for the aid again.
In the interim between the benefits, the Princes have paid for all their groceries, which means they were making their own selections. "We may actually have been eating healthier in the past two months," she said.
Prince shared her experience last week at a Washington hearing of a committee of the Institute of Medicine, an advisory organization. The panel is preparing recommendations for the Agriculture Department on the WIC offerings.
The program's original planners expected recipients to get their produce-related nutrients from fruit and vegetable juices, which have long shelf lives and fairly stable prices. Only breast-feeding women can get fresh produce through the program, and they can get only carrots.
The committee is considering recommending more fresh fruits and vegetables, said Suzanne Murphy, the panel's chairwoman and a nutrition program director at the University of Hawaii.
The preliminary report calls for more vegetables to provide vitamins, minerals, and fiber to children age 1 to 4. It also calls for fruits, as well as lowfat or nonfat dairy products, to provide nutrients to teenagers and adults on WIC, who include pregnant women and nursing mothers.
