California WIC Authorized Food Products List

The dataset is a list of food items authorized for purchase through California's Women, Infants and Children (WIC) program, identified by UPC or PLU codes. It is used by approximately 3,800 authorized vendor stores to process electronic benefit transfers for about one million monthly participants.

Use Cases

• Validate UPC or PLU codes at point-of-sale against the authorized list to ensure WIC EBT transaction compliance.
• Analyze the distribution of authorized food items across categories and subcategories to understand nutritional program offerings.
• Maintain vendor systems by ensuring scanned UPCs match the authorized product list for accurate benefit processing.

Strengths

• Data is directly used by approximately 3,800 WIC-authorized vendor stores for transaction processing.
• Supports a large-scale public health program serving about one million participants monthly.
• Managed by the State of California, indicating an authoritative source for program rules.

Limitations

• The specific number of rows (products) and columns (features) is not provided in the input.
• Data may require handling to prevent automatic formatting changes when opened in tools like Excel.

Provenance

Source

State of California

Collection Method

Official list of authorized food items for the WIC program, identified by UPC and PLU codes.

Freshness

Last updated on March 23, 2026.

Geography

State of California, United States.