A/HRC/26/31 I. Introduction 1. The right to health not only embraces within its scope such underlying determinants of health as an adequate supply of safe food, but its realization is also inextricably linked to the fulfilment of the right to food. Access to nutritiously safe food as an underlying determinant of the right to health is connected with the concepts of food security and nutrition security. Food security is defined by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations as the situation where “all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food necessary to meet their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life”.1 The Committee on the Economic, Social and Cultural Rights has held that one of the core State obligations under the right to health includes ensuring “access to the minimum essential food which is nutritionally adequate and safe, to ensure freedom from hunger to everyone”.2 On the legal obligations under the right to food, the Committee similarly observed that: “Every State is obliged to ensure for everyone under its jurisdiction access to the minimum essential food which is sufficient, nutritionally adequate and safe, to ensure their freedom from hunger.”3 This concomitant obligation is increasingly important, as unhealthy foods have been implicated in the growing global burden of NCDs. 2. More than 36 million people die from NCDs every year. NCDs have outstripped communicable diseases as the leading cause of death in most parts of the world. Four main diseases – cardiovascular diseases, cancers, chronic respiratory diseases and diabetes – account for a majority of NCD-related deaths. Unhealthy diets are one of the primary modifiable risk factors associated with NCDs and account for 2.7 million deaths annually.4 Low- and middle-income countries suffer a greater burden of NCD mortality, with 80 per cent of all NCD deaths occurring in these countries.5 Unhealthy diets are also linked to high rates of obesity, a growing global epidemic that kills around 2.8 million people a year and is a known risk factor for NCDs.6 3. Diets high in intake of foods such as burgers, pizzas, red meats, crisps, biscuits, salty snacks, sugary drinks that contain high levels of sugar, salt, trans-fats and saturated fats are known to pose a greater risk for obesity and NCDs.7 Most of these foods are ultraprocessed,8 ready to eat but energy-dense and containing empty calories devoid of nutritional value. Unhealthy foods consumed in small quantities and in addition to healthier sources are not necessarily harmful to health. However, given their high availability and 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 4 FAO, World Food Summit Plan of Action, para. 1 (1996). CESCR, General Comment No. 14, E/C.12/2000/4, para. 43(b). CESCR, General Comment No. 12, E/C.12/1999/5, para. 14. World Health Organization (WHO), “Unhealthy diets & physical inactivity”, NMH Fact Sheet, June 2009. Available from http://www.who.int/nmh/publications/fact_sheet_diet_en.pdf. WHO, Global Status Report on Noncommunicable Diseases 2010 (Geneva, 2010, reprinted in 2011), p. 9. WHO, “10 facts on obesity”, available from http://www.who.int/features/factfiles/obesity/facts/en/index1.html. M. Tokunaga et al., “Diets, nutrients and noncommunicable diseases”, The Open Nutraceuticals Journal , vol. 5 (2012), p. 152. Rob Moodie et al., “Profits and pandemics: prevention of harmful effects of tobacco, alcohol, and ultra-processed food and drink industries”, The Lancet (2013), vol. 381, No. 9867, p. 671: “Ultraprocessed products are made from processed substances extracted or ‘refined’ from whole foods – e.g. oils, hydrogenated oils and fats, flours and starches, variants of sugar, and cheap parts or remnants of animal foods – with little or no whole foods.”