Needy families hit roadblock to using WIC food vouchers
Cashiers smiled as they welcomed customers to the Foods Co supermarket in East Oakland during the much-anticipated opening of the 75,000-square-foot store just over a month ago. Grocers showed off stacks of colorful fresh fruits and vegetables, the kind of nutritious foods residents said were impossible to find on the liquor-store shelves that were previously their only neighborhood option.
Then the Foods Co grudgingly began turning away some of their neediest shoppers.
The celebrated new store - like many others across the state - is caught up in California's drive to clean up a federally funded program it administers, the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children, which gives low-income pregnant women and new moms vouchers to pay for specific healthful food items, such as low-fat milk, eggs and fresh produce.
Stores must apply for state permission to accept the WIC vouchers from customers. But for the past three years, the federal government has placed a moratorium on new store applications in California because the state has been unable to adequately monitor existing stores amid complaints of price-gouging. Among the complaints were some that vendors offered WIC participants questionable incentives to shop at their stores and then inflated the price of WIC items charged to the state.
Read the rest at: http://www.sfgate.com/nation/article/Needy-families-hit-roadblock-to-using-WIC-food-5482223.php
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like Prime Time Nutrition, that locate in low-income neighborhoods that are otherwise food deserts, the better to prey on the residents. 