Responding to pressure to reduce costs of the Women, Infants and Children nutrition program, Cheerios manufacturer General Mills is lobbying in Capitol Hill against efforts to require users of the state-administered grocery vouchers to buy only lower-priced house-brand toasted oat cereal. Oklahoma WIC officials who instituted such a requirement say it is now saving their state $147,000 a month.

The WIC program accounts for three percent of General Mills' $5.6 billion annual sales, but spokesman David Dix framed the issue as a fundamental matter of consumer choice: "We don't think WIC should substitute a cereal kids have never heard of and force them to eat it." Both Massachusetts and Texas have removed Cheerios from their lists of WIC-approved products in the past, but both soon put them back following public outcry.

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