children

The USDA has completed a months-long update of the foods available through the Women, Infants, and Children program (WIC) to reflect the latest nutrition science, said Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack on Tuesday. The new list, which includes a significant expansion of fruit and vegetable benefits, would take effect in about 60 days.

Hundreds of schools in the Midwest "nestle against fields of corn and soybeans that are routinely sprayed with pesticides that could drift onto school grounds," but states "do not require any kind of buffer zones and seldom require any notification that pesticides are about to be sprayed," says the Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting. Nine states in other parts of the country, with California the most prominent, have laws that mandate buffer zones.

Poor children growing up in three out of four rural counties — especially in the Great Plains — are more likely to earn more than the national average by the age of 26 than their counterparts in cities, says a national study by Stanford economist Raj Chetty. Just 29 percent of kids in densely populated urban centers earn more than the national average as adults.

Brandon Lipps, who helped engineer $8.6 billion in food stamp cuts in the 2014 farm law, is the new administrator of USDA's Food and Nutrition Service, which oversees food stamps, school lunch and other public nutrition programs. Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue announced the appointment of Lipps and two senior nutrition officials a day ahead of a trip, scheduled for today, to a summer meal site for school-aged children.

Roughly 20 percent of baby food samples showed detectable levels of lead, says a report out by the nonprofit Environmental Defense Fund.

The American Academy of Pediatrics says that far from being a healthy drink, "Fruit juice has no essential role in healthy, balanced diets of children." American children between the ages of 2 and 18 consume almost half their fruit intake in the form of juice, but doctors warn that has to stop.

Children face some of the greatest risk of exposure to dangerous pesticides when they live near farm fields or go to schools near them, says a report by Pesticide Action Network North America, which describes itself as a challenger of the global proliferation of pesticides.

Regulators set exposure limits for pesticides based on comprehensive studies of the individual product. Scientists from UCLA say in a new report that this approach should be reconsidered because growers often apply pesticides as a mixture.

Children who live on farms with dairy cows run one-tenth the risk of developing allergies as other rural children, say researchers at the University of Gothenburg, in Sweden. Allergy rates have climbed in recent decades and one frequent explanation is that children are exposed to fewer micro-organism and have fewer infections than in the past, so their immune systems do not develop resistance.

USDA published a final rule, effective in 30 days, in the Federal Register to "phase out the participation of women, infants, and children in CSFP (Commodity Supplemental Food Program) and transition it to a low-income, elderly-only program," as required by the 2014 farm policy law. Women and children will be served by WIC in coming years. A small portion of CSFP enrollment is women and children. They will remain in the program until the children exceed the age of eligibility.

More than 90 percent of U.S. children eat far more salt than recommended by the government, putting them at risk for developing high blood pressure and heart disease later in life, said the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In a Vital Signs report, CDC researchers said that 43 percent of the sodium comes from the 10 foods most commonly eaten by children: pizza, bread and rolls, cold cuts/cured meats, savory snacks, sandwiches, cheese, chicken patties/nuggets/tenders, pasta mixed dishes, Mexican mixed dishes, and soups.

"(P)ublic health experts say hundreds of children under 16...continue to work in America’s tobacco fields" through an exclusion in labor law that allows youth as young as 12 years old to work unlimited hours as farm workers, says the New York Times in a story about youth labor on tobacco farms. The story says field workers risk green tobacco sickness - nicotine poisoning - from dew or rain water dripping from the leaves of tobacco plants. Vomiting, dizziness and irregular heartbeats are among the symptoms.