Matt Yglesias writes about the stupid food restrictions for WIC recipients. As the only political blogger who has actually been on WIC, let me tell you how it works. From an old post of mine:

… The vouchers are made out for very specific items. You can’t blow it
all on Twinkies. There were vouchers for cheese (Monteray Jack or
cheddar), whole milk, frozen juice (orange, apple, or grape), and
formula. Formula was the real prize. Baby guzzles about $100 of formula
a month.

The vouchers have very specific dates on them.  They have to be used up by a certain week or they become void.

Now for the weird part. You can’t redeem your voucher for formula
and walk out of the supermarket. You had to buy everything, the cheese
and the juice and the milk, whether you wanted it or not. Most
annoyingly, they required you to purchase vast quantities of milk. Like
two or three gallons per week. Far more than an average person could
consume. We had to give away some of the milk to neighbors so it
wouldn’t go bad.

Now for the annoying part. You had to cart all that milk home. Not
every supermarket accepts WIC vouchers. We had to walk to a far off
supermarket over on Broadway. All that milk doesn’t fit in the back of
babystroller, so you had to have someone help you get it all home. I
suppose if you had car it wouldn’t be such a big deal. But I’ll let you
in on a secret. A lot of poor people don’t have cars.

Surely, there was some deal with the milk farmers over this one.
Some Vermont Senator got a little pork back home in exchange for my
backache.

That was the abbreviated story of us on WIC. I could tell you how
humiliating it was to get the voucher signed by the store manager. Or
long waits at the WIC office to get recertified. Or the required
parenting classes.

Megan is talking about it, too.

UPDATE: In defense of WIC.