Recent advances in pharmacotherapy, digital health technologies, and clinical care have significantly improved individual outcomes for noncommunicable diseases (NCDs). Yet obesity and diet‑related NCDs continue to rise globally, revealing a critical paradox. Even as these conditions are treated more effectively, they may simultaneously be reproduced through the very commercial systems, market structures, and health‑system arrangements that shape everyday environments.

This session moves beyond the conventional framing of NCDs as the result of individual choices or behaviors. Instead, it situates obesity and diet‑related conditions within the Commercial Determinants of Health (CDoH), examining how corporate practices, incentive structures, and institutional arrangements shape exposure, risk, and health outcomes. These dynamics do not affect all populations equally; they fall disproportionately on people in low‑ and middle‑income countries, socioeconomically disadvantaged urban communities, and children and adolescents who are highly exposed to commercial influences.

Against this backdrop, the session poses a central question: How do commercial systems and health‑system responses interact to produce, manage, and reproduce obesity and diet‑related NCDs—and what does this mean for health equity, sustainability, and policy?