Perspective: Interventions to improve the diets of children and adolescents

Elsevier, Global Food Security, Volume 27, December 2020
Authors: 
Morris S.S., Barquera S., Sutrisna A., Izwardy D., Kupka R.

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.