My Experience with the New WIC Guidelines

This month I went to my WIC appointment to learn that the WIC program has changed their guidlines of what you can get. Personally, I have been waiting for these changes. I really think they are good. You do get less eggs, milk, and fruit juice, but you get whole wheat bread, and fresh fruits and vegetables. I got to pick the packages I wanted and I decided to get one of my packages with cheese and the others had all milk. My childen are 4 and 2 that are on WIC and those were the packages I got to choose from.

Negatives about the new WIC guidelines: I guess since this is the first month that Kentucky is using the new WIC guidelines, there are going to be problems starting out. Some of the problems that I have had were:

1. With the cheese package you get a quart of milk. On WIC you are suppose to get the lowest price milk and the stores that had the quarts did not have the brands considered lowest price and they refused to give me the ones they had available. I actually went ahead and used my voucher without getting the quart because I really needed milk. I called the District Health Department and they said that the stores were suppose to give you the lowest cost available so I should have been able to get the higher price milk. She said she would call those stores. so hopefully this will not be an issue in the future.

2. Right now there is only one bread in the 18 oz size that you can and it is sugar free. I guess it's okay, but the only way I have gotten my kids to eat it is to grill it or toast it. The person I talked with at the district health department told me that she thinks that the bakeries will step up and start putting out some more in those sizes. But for now that is all I can find in this area. You can get brown rice instead of the bread, but the several stores I went to did not have the right sizes that were specificed. The person from the district office also told me that stores have a leadway to start getting the stuff and then they will be checked and if they do not have the things they are suppose to have then they will not be accepted on the WIC program.

3. Going to more than one store to find the stuff I need has not been real convient for me!

4. The fruit and vegetables voucher is for $6.00 worth of eligible products. Most store will let you pay the difference if you go over. I usually go over about .24cents or something like that. Walmart has decided not to let customers pay the difference so they will not do that. As a customer it is really hard to estimate $6.00 worth of fruits and veggies. So I usually just take up all the fruits and veggies I plan to buy and then see how much equal $6.00. This has been the easiest for me.

Positives:

I really like the new guidelines and I think that all my negatives will soon be taken care of as the new guidlines have a chance to get started. I love that we can get the fresh fruits and vegetables. There are so many great things we can make with those and it gets my children off of so much fruit juice. I believe the WIC program is to blame for my kids love of juice! I also like getting the bread, even if my kids will only eat it a certain way. So, actually even though there is some confusion right now I love the new guidlines and feel that I will be able to make more things with the food on the program.