As potato industry lobbyists push Congress to override a well-established, science-based rule by dictating that WIC offer white potatoes, they claim that WIC participants can purchase white potatoes at farmers’ markets but not grocery stores. This claim is extremely misleading.
The vouchers for fruit and vegetables that WIC participants receive each month cannot be used to purchase...
Community eligibility, a provision of the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010, will allow more than 25,000 schools in high-poverty neighborhoods to offer nutritious meals to all students at no charge next year, as we explain in a new paper.
School districts can offer community eligibility district-wide...
We’ve explained why nutrition scientists, not lobbyists, should decide whether WIC should add white potatoes to the limited list of foods that it provides — and numerous editorial boards and columnists agree. Here are a few examples, the first two from major potato-growing states,...
Senators Susan Collins (R-ME) and Mark Udall (D-CO) essentially argued in yesterday’s USA Today that Congress should, for the first time, override the science-based process for deciding which foods the WIC program provides by requiring WIC to add white potatoes. That...
The Washington Post’s Catherine Rampell rightly decries the industry lobbying campaign to add white potatoes to the limited list of foods that the WIC program provides.
As we’ve...
Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack should reject Congress’s recent call to add white potatoes to the limited list of foods that the WIC program provides. The report accompanying the omnibus spending bill that Congress approved last month instructs the Agriculture Department (USDA) to include all kinds...
With nearly 16 million children in households that have trouble affording enough nutritious food at some point during the year, several states are taking advantage of a new federal option to reduce hunger and streamline their school meal programs, as a major new report from CBPP and the Food Research and Action Center (FRAC)...
Many school districts 
don’t charge nearly enough
to cover the cost of “paid lunches” for students whose family incomes are too high to qualify for free or reduced-price lunches. As a result, some school districts divert part of the federal subsidies that are supposed to help pay for meals for low-income children to subsidize meals for better-off children, leaving less money to...
As we’ve noted previously, the 2014 agriculture appropriations bill moving through the House underfunds WIC, the highly regarded nutrition program for low-income pregnant women, infants, and young children, and as a result could deny WIC benefits and services to eligible women...
The 2014 agriculture appropriations bill that a House subcommittee will consider today would underfund WIC, the highly regarded nutrition program for low-income pregnant women, infants, and young children. The bill could result in the denial of WIC benefits and services to...
