The WIC – The Women, Infants, and Children Nutrition Program – is a tremendous program dedicated to helping women, infants, and children in need make healthier dietary choices.
The program is designed to provide better, healthier food options to women who are pregnant, postpartum, or breastfeeding, as well as infants and children up to 5 years old, to purchase specific foods each month to help with diet and health.
Those who are eligible must be determined to be at “nutritional risk” by a physician. This means they have been determined to have a medically based risk such as anemia, being underweight, a history of pregnancy complications, or maternal age, or a dietary based risk such as a poor diet history.
Those participating in WIC receive vouchers to purchase ideal foods for women and children. Of the items on that list, Randall Beans are a WIC eligible food!
All varieties of Randall Beans – including great northern beans, black beans, kidney beans, pinto beans, navy beans, black-eyed peas, garbanzo beans, and Ultimate 4 Bean Mix – meet the requirements for beans or legumes to be WIC eligible. Randall Beans come with no extra added fats, oils, meat, fruit, or vegetables in the packaging and have minimally added sugar as a natural preservative.
But beans are so much more than just being another item on the WIC food list. Beans are one of the best and healthiest sources of protein you can find on your grocery store shelves, particularly for expecting mothers.
Beans are also a great source of folate, which is considered a crucial part of a woman’s diet during pregnancy because of its use in helping develop the brain and spinal cord of babies and protect against birth defects in those areas as well.
Beans are also a cornerstone for simple meals that are healthy, nutritious, and easy for even an inexperienced chef on a budget to make. Here are a couple of great recipes to start with this WIC eligible food!
Interested in more ways to incorporate nutritious and delicious Randall Beans into the diet of you or your children? These recipes are a start, but there is so much more than that! Discover the versatility of cooking with beans by checking out our recipe page for more simple bean dishes or download one of our free cookbooks of bean recipes.
