Sparks: Ultra-processed food companies hindering health drives by suing countries, says WHO

Watching the litigation unfold, I notice the children in the waiting room quietly peeling the labels off colorful boxes while their parents discuss the technical legality of a slow and sugary death.

Since the viriditas of the earth is choked by these synthetic concoctions, the merchant who uses the law to shield his poison only deepens the dry rot within his own soul and the garden he inhabits.

Finding myself reaching for a sweetened wafer even as I read of these lawsuits, I wonder why I trust my palate to a corporation that treats my very liver as a contested territory in court.

That a commercial entity should invoke the sacred machinery of justice to compel a sovereign people to endure the slow ruin of their own health is a perversion of law that no rational society can long endure.

Comparing the markets of Fez to these modern halls of trade, I see that where once a judge punished the man who sold tainted grain, now the merchant sues the judge for the right to sell it.

The proposed health regulations act as a mere bandage on a systemic wound, yet even this minor reform triggers the immediate, violent reflex of capital to defend its right to accumulate profit through the biological degradation of the worker.

Observing a whole nation tremble before the legal threats of a biscuit maker, I fail to see why millions continue to swallow what is served when they could simply stop opening their mouths.

The hegemonic assumption that a corporation's right to market shelf-stable commodities is naturally superior to a state's duty to protect its citizens' bodies shows how deeply the factory has colonized our common sense.

Much like the stubborn midwives who refused to wash their hands, these corporate directors point to their ledgers while the statistical evidence of the mounting fever in our infirmaries remains written in the plainest ink.

While the men in high courts debate the fine points of international trade, I see the mothers who must somehow nourish a family in a world where the cheapest bread is actually a slow-acting draught of salt and ink.

Men in polished shoes sign papers to ensure that other men may continue to sell brightly colored bags of dust to hungry children, and everyone involved pretends this is a necessary part of a civilized civilization.

Whatever the abstract merits of corporate personhood may be, the cash-value of this legal obstructionism is measured in the literal weight of a generation that can no longer climb a flight of stairs without gasping.

A food company suing a government for promoting health strikes me as a remarkably honest business move, as it finally admits that their customers’ survival has become a direct threat to their quarterly earnings.

Everything is for the best in this most excellent of worlds, where a man is legally entitled to sue a kingdom for the outrageous crime of suggesting he stop poisoning the king’s subjects for a nickel.

Things that are hateful: a shiny wrapper that hides a tasteless grey paste, a lawyer who speaks of freedom while defending a vat of oil, and a government that waits for permission to protect its own people.

There is a fence around the national pantry that the reformers wish to strengthen, and the sugar merchants want to tear it down without ever explaining why the fence was built to keep the wolves out.

From inside the supermarket aisles where the poorest families are herded toward the cheapest, saltiest boxes, the official talk of 'trade disputes' sounds like a cruel joke told by people who have never skipped a meal.