Blogs

It’s award season! USDA is excited to highlight summer meal sponsors who go above and beyond to ensure children receive nutritious, appetizing meals.

The next meeting of the 2025 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee will be held on Jan. 19, 2024, from 8:30 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. ET.

Increasing transparency and encouraging competition around WIC formula contracts may seem purely bureaucratic, but it’s actually a vital step toward ensuring babies can get the formula they need. 

The Omaha Nation WIC program recognizes the importance of incorporating Indigenous foods and traditional cooking practices into the WIC experience to form a holistic approach to nutrition education. Recently, they have taken extra steps to spotlight foods indigenous to their community, as well as dishes and cooking methods traditionally used by the Umóⁿhoⁿ people.

On August 14-19, a leadership team traveled to Guam and the Commonwealth of Northern Marianna Islands to meet with the territories’ leadership, superintendents and commissioners, that administer USDA food assistance programs. They discussed the challenges of transitioning back to pre-pandemic operations, how USDA could assist, and lessons learned.

Here’s what FNS staff had to say about the White House Conference on Hunger, Nutrition, and Health and what lies ahead.

Today kicks off the second, historic White House Conference on Hunger, Nutrition and Health. It’s been more than 50 years since the last conference, which produced impactful, meaningful changes to improve USDA nutrition assistance programs, including SNAP, WIC and school meals. The conference will work towards ending hunger and reducing diet-related diseases and disparities in the U.S. by 2030.

Liberation Farms allows families to grow food for themselves. In 2020, support from community partners helped move farm operations onto a single property with room for everyone – and a herd of goats, too!

In WIC, specialty formulas are issued with a doctor’s note to participants receiving Food Package III, which is for children with special nutritional needs. These babies have a documented health condition that requires the use of a specialty formula. With specialty formula in short supply, many families have needed an alternative option. WIC state agencies can use a variety of strategies to support participants’ access to specialty formulas.

WIC’s food package helps to supplement a household’s food budget, increasing participants’ food resources and helping to tackle food and nutrition insecurity. Nutrition educators are a critical ingredient to helping the USDA promote and elevate nutrition security.

The White House Conference on Hunger, Nutrition and Health will be on September 28th – the first of its kind in over 50 years. The conference will focus on nutrition security, which means maintaining consistent and equitable access to healthy, safe and affordable food.

In early August, Deputy Under Secretary Stacy Dean and Administrator Cindy Long travelled to San Francisco for meetings and events related to the work FNS does to support local communities - visiting programs that have an impact on addressing hunger.

Mary’s Center WIC staff recently implemented electronic benefits transfer, also known as eWIC, in Washington, D.C. 

The FNS Turnip the Beet awards recognize outstanding summer meal program sponsors for going above and beyond, ensuring children receive high quality meals in a fun, safe and healthy learning environment when school is out.

To all WIC staff around the U.S., territories, and tribal nations, we are grateful for your creative problem-solving and commitment to caring for people during this challenging time.

When enrolling moms into the USDA WIC, less than 30% of state agencies in Connecticut were asking for the fathers name. We don't encourage dads to step up and then we wonder why they don't show up.

The ongoing infant formula shortage due to supply chain issues, which worsened due to a major formula recall in February, has left many caregivers feeling concerned and anxious about their options for safely feeding their infants.

Supporting families is the foundation of our mission here at USDA. So, before we close 2021, I’d like to look back at one of our programs that continues to do just that.

When Rebecca and Parker Catt became parents, they faced a new set of challenges, including making the right choices in deciding what their baby James should be fed.

Like countless schools across the country, the Live Oak Unified School District, about 50 miles north of Sacramento, had to shift their operations in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.