The whole WIC program, including the antedated paper checks/extremely limited products is intended to shame poor young mothers as "welfare queens" to the rest of the community...imo...
They get debit cards for it now.
Here we have a program for young women with the acronym WIC: Women with Infant Children. I have been behind a poor young woman more than once in the grocery store that held up the line because she was new to the program. It is an additional program to food stamps which can be, and to often are, used for everything. It is an oddly dated program where they still have to use paper checks, something that these young women have probably never used in their lives and what they can buy with them is severely limited. For example in the picture above you will see two identical products. They cannot buy the one on the right because it has the name "cider" on the label.
As a person who's used the WIC program a few times, I can tell you the amounts are a pain in the ***. For one thing, there's the assumption the mother is a Wal-Mart shopper. Many of the products are cut for amounts only found on Wal-Mart products, or the approved items(very specific, like honey flavored yogurt) are only found at Wal-Mart. (No way in hell you're getting me in Wal-Mart; I went with less on certain items.)
They are trying to improve the program, though. Its come a long way from when LeeAnder was a baby to when Yudhi was. I actually didn't use it when LeeAnder was a toddler because it was mostly milk, and he was lactose intolerant. Couldn't substitute for soy or nut milk(you can now).
I will say, it does provide almost all of the formula for those unable to breastfeed. That's a huge advantage.
