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Federal food program for children improves nutritional value of diets
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Policy changes that mandated higher nutritional quality for a federal food program helped to improve the diets of children participating in the program, according to recent research in Pediatrics.
“The findings from the present analysis suggest that revisions to the [Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC)] package in 2009 were associated with a significant improvement in diet quality among children participating in this program across the United States,” June M. Tester, MD, MPH, of the department of endocrinology at the University of California, San Francisco, and colleagues wrote. “Using rigorous methods of dietary assessment and a nationally representative sample from [National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES)], our study results are consistent with earlier findings from regional studies.”
The researchers studied 1,197 children, aged 2 to 4 years, from low-income households for the years before (2003-2008) and after (2011-2012) implementation of the new policy to improve nutritional standards of the WIC package. To determine Healthy Eating Index (HEI-2010) scores, the researchers conducted two 24-hour recall interviews with the caregiver most knowledgeable about the study participant’s diet. The researchers compared 719 WIC program participants with 478 nonparticipants to gauge changes in diet associated with the program.
Study results showed that HEI-2010 scores for participants increased from 52.4 at baseline to 58.3 after implementation of the healthy food standards. Nonparticipants showed smaller gains, improving from 50 to 52.4. The researchers wrote that WIC food package quality improvements were responsible for an adjusted average 3.7-point increase in HEI-2010 scores for WIC participants.
Tester and colleagues, however, noted that dietary improvements were not apparent for all food types included in the WIC package, mainly fruit consumption.
“The WIC package change included incentive for purchases of fruits as well, and a hypothesized outcome would also have been an increase in fruit consumption,” Tester and colleagues wrote. “However, WIC participants did not significantly increase their whole fruit component scores more than nonparticipants. A larger sample including a greater proportion of children after the policy change will be required to examine this trend more fully.” – by David Costill
Disclosure: The researchers report no relevant financial disclosures.
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