Opinion: How can we make America healthy again without fruits and vegetables?

When the MAHA Commission released its report last year, it had few good things to say about the state of the country’s nutrition programs. One highlight tucked onto page 34: praises for the Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC) and its role in increasing vegetable and fruit consumption through its cash value benefit. That’s why the president’s FY27 budget slashing the very benefit it once praised by 75% — and the House appropriators’ subsequent cut of 10% with a commitment to get to the president’s level — is difficult to reconcile. How can we “make America healthy again” if the very program it lifted it up is decimated?

What’s more, the justification framing the current fruit and vegetable benefit as a pandemic-era level is false. It is true that Congress voted to temporarily increase the fruit and vegetable benefit during the pandemic and in the nation’s recovery from it. And it made perfect sense at the time — growers were struggling, participants were struggling, and we had a turnkey solution that could benefit both quickly without creating a new program. That’s good government.

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But those temporary bumps rightly expired and in 2024 USDA implemented its overdue and cost-neutral updates to the WIC Food Package. Based on the National Academy of Science’s 2017 recommendations to the USDA to better align with current nutrition guidance, the WIC Food Package raised kids’ benefit from $8 to $26 a month, and women from $10 to around $50 a month. To compensate for the increase, changes were made to the base package, like reducing a child’s juice benefit from 128 ounces to 64 ounces monthly, in alignment with pediatric nutrition guidance, including newest Dietary Guidelines for Americans.

The result was overwhelmingly positive. Children’s daily fruit and vegetable consumption increased by 1/3 cup and variety increased, too. Before the update, only two varieties of fruits and two varieties of vegetables were purchased on average. At the higher amount, five varieties of fruit and four varieties of vegetables are redeemed on average. This benefits not only health, but American farmers.

It is also important to understand that the program is supplemental. The current amount represents 50% of the Dietary Guidelines for Americans’ recommended amounts. Slashing the benefit to the president’s proposed level brings that down to around 12% of recommendations.

That’s a far cry from fulfilling MAHA’s promise of transforming federal nutrition programs to prioritize dietary quality and risks undermining one of the clearest success stories in federal nutrition policy.

Congress should reject the president’s and House Appropriation Committee’s cuts and leave the WIC Food Package intact. The millions of moms and young children benefiting from the program deserve no less.

Mollie Van Lieu is the vice president of nutrition and health for the International Fresh Produce Association.