A/HRC/26/31 steps to realize the right to health. While many challenges facing the food system, like environmental pressures such as draughts and floods, are out of the control of the food industry, there are several areas where it can make a positive impact on health by investing in and influencing healthier food choices. To this end, the industry should consider adopting standards to improve the nutritional quality of foods through product reformulation and to improve labelling and information on their products to contribute to healthier diets. The food industry should also invest in research to improve the nutritional content of their products rather than investing in increasing the marketability of existing products.49 Furthermore, supermarkets and fast food restaurants should take steps to market and promote healthier options. For example, in addition to providing calorie content of meals on menu cards, fast food restaurants should adopt appropriate nutrient profiling models that indicate the nutritional composition of the foods available. 32. In furthering their responsibility to respect the right to health, the food industry should ensure the transparency of nutritional information and composition, an area where thus far the efforts of the food industry have been woefully lacking. The food industry should take concrete steps to ensure that consumers have sufficient nutritional information about their products to aid and promote more responsible dietary decisions. Moreover, creating and implementing mechanisms that promote disclosures of conflicts of interest within their governance structures can contribute towards efforts to ensure transparency of the operations of the food industry. This is of particular relevance where global health funders, who are also non-State actors, are shareholders or sit on the governance boards of the food industry or vice versa.50 VI. Vulnerable groups 33. States have a core obligation to protect the right to health of vulnerable and marginalized groups. The present report focuses on three particular groups: children, because of their greater susceptibility to marketing; women, because gendered marketing perpetuates traditional and unequal gender roles; and low-income groups, because healthy food options are not readily available or accessible to them. Other individuals or communities may also face higher risks of diet-related NCDs due to race, gender, indigenous status or place of residence, as well as because of multiple or intersecting vulnerabilities. A. Children 34. Despite the common association of NCDs with older persons, children are also affected by the full range of NCDs, including heart disease, cancer and diabetes, and by their risk factors such as being overweight or obese.51 Diet-related NCDs and obesity affect even very young children. For instance, of the 500 million obese people worldwide in 2008, 49 50 51 Marion Nestle and Ted Wilson, “Food industry and political influences on American nutrition”, in Nutritional Health: Strategies for Disease Prevention, N J Temple et al. (eds.), 3rd ed. (Humana Press, 2012), p. 480. David Stuckler et al., “Global health philanthropy and institutional relationships: how should conflicts of interest be addressed?”, PLOS Medicine, vol. 8, No. 4 (2011), p. 7. NCD Alliance, “A focus on children and non-communicable diseases (NCDs)”, position paper prepared for the United Nations Summit on Non-Communicable Diseases, New York, September 2011, p. 5. 13