WIC Food Packages are Changing!

Posted on April 01, 2025

WIC Updates on the Food Package

WIC provides complete nutrition care through four services: Healthy Foods, Nutrition Education, Lactation Support, and Referrals to other needed services. WIC Participants are seen at least four times a year, educated on the foods they can receive, taught how to shop using their WIC card, and receive individualized nutrition education. All WIC participants are guided through a nutrition risk assessment to determine which food package best meets their nutritional needs. Participants are referred to Health Care Providers, Mental Health and Substance use providers, Li Heap, Head Start, Gleaners, Food Banks, MaineCare, and others.

The WIC food packages are changing for the first time since 2009 to promote nutrition security and equity, provide more choices to access essential nutrients, provide more balance, accommodate cultural and personal preferences, and better support lactation goals. Key changes will be reducing juice and milk and expanding whole grains and fish issuance to almost all participants. WIC is adding new foods as well. More whole-grain options are being added. Although some whole-grain options remain the same, such as the inclusion of whole wheat or whole grain bread and bread products, pasta, and instant quick or regular cooking brown rice, wild rice, and bulgur, other options have been added, such as millet, triticale, amaranth, cornmeal, corn masa flour, buckwheat, teff, kamut, sorghum, wheat berries, and other intact whole grains (e.g., red rice, black rice, freekeh, spelt, farro, etc.). Nut and seed butters and plant-based dairy products like oat milk and sunflower butter are also being added, and participants have the option to substitute their juice for extra fresh, frozen, canned, or dried fruits and vegetables! The WIC counselors will guide WIC participants through the food selection process in the clinic so participants will be prepared at the store.

For more information on the food package changes here. https://www.fns.usda.gov/wic/food-packages