Perspective: Interventions to improve the diets of children and adolescents

Building on the Innocenti Framework on Food Systems for Children and Adolescents, this paper describes the significance of a food systems approach to improving children's diets. It summarizes the key learnings on effective intervention design from the papers in this special issue, focusing on the determinants in the framework: food supply chains, food environments, and behaviors of caregivers, children and adolescents. It lays out relevant policy and programmatic implications and organizes these according to the Nuffield ladder of public policy interventions. Country-level constraints to scaling key solutions in Mozambique, Mexico, and Indonesia are also described. The paper concludes with a call for greater urgency in addressing the influencers of children's diets and a more cross-sectoral approach to policy design. •A new framework identifies the food systems determinants of children's diets and is evidence-based.•There should be a policy focus on the production and supply of those foods that make exceptional contributions to children's dietary intakes.•Children's diets are particularly shaped by food environments—physical, economic, policy and sociocultural— with schools a unique feature.•The diets of children and adolescents are also shaped by intra-household dynamics, food preparation, desirability and acceptability of food.•Evidence supports a wide range of policy and programmatic actions which need to be implemented in concert to improve diets.