Monday, April 14, 2008

WIC messages: "Touching Hearts, Touching Minds"

Instead of lecturing low-income mothers about nutrition science, the Touching Hearts, Touching Minds site from the Massachusetts WIC program takes an emotion-based approach towards healthy living education for pregnant women and mothers of infants and young children.

In addition to providing nice posters and teaching materials for free, the WIC site offers much to think about on topics frequently covered on U.S. Food Policy. If you have been weighing the money and time costs of home cooking for a low-income single parent, you may be interested in some of the site's recipe materials as examples that show the possibilities and limits. If you have been contemplating food industry marketing that implicitly encourages early weaning from breastfeeding, you may like the site's materials for mothers of infants. This poster about "pester power" and food advertising is also interesting.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Interesting. Do you know who is the audience for the website?

usfoodpolicy said...

I think the site was developed for nutrition educators in the WIC program in Massachusetts, but such materials tend to get shared more widely through online resource sites for nutrition educators nationally.

Alanna Kellogg said...

I noticed at the grocery store this week - a notice at the checkout - that Missouri is changing its WIC list. Gone are cornflakes (for sure) and cheerios (maybe, it was another cereal anyway) and some juices and other products.