(Author`s Name)(Instructor`s Name)(Course)(Date)A Weighty Matter: Marketing of Unhealthy Foods and Drinks to ChildrenUnhealthy food, popularly known as junk food, is the type of food whose importance to the body is marginal as it adds very few nutrients to the body. The greater percentage of most unhealthy foods contains calories, sugar, salt, and fat in alarmingly high quantities. Unhealthy foods also contain additives and preservatives, which are made from chemical substances whose cumulative effect in the body is detrimental. In such foods, essential nutrients such as proteins, vitamins, and minerals are usually in negligible quantities. The physical effect of unhealthy or junk foods is obesity and numerous related complications (Lundborg 2). However, despite the fact that these kinds of food are regarded as unhealthy, many people still go for them. Interestingly, marketing of these foods has influenced people`s purchasing behavior, which is not wholly influenced by the taste of the foods as is expected (Peeters et. al. 3). Companies producing unhealthy food conduct intensive marketing to attract families with children through advertisements, actors, celebrity figures, and gifts (such as toys) to buy their products. Based on this hypothesis, this paper will cover an interview with Dr. Hui Qing Lu, an economy teacher at the Sun Yat-Sen University located in Guangzhou, China. According to the interviewee, Dr. Lu, the food industry spends billions of dollars annually in marketing of their products to children and teenagers. This has become a major concern in the U.S. and all over the world as well, because most of these foods are unhealthy. Food marketing, by description, is the process used by food companies to persuade consumption of their products. Food marketing mainly involves marketing of unhealthy food to the main target market – children. Some of the common unhealthy foods come in the form of snacks, which most people buy for convenience and immediate satisfaction. Snacks mostly include chewing gums, candy, fast foods, sugary breakfast cereals, sweet desserts, salty snacks, baked foods, and carbonated soft drinks, though they are not totally limited to these. Fast foods fall under different classifications depending on nutritional value, but most of them are usually unhealthy. These include pizza, hamburgers, hotdogs, French fries, burritos, tacos, and meat pies, among many others.The statistics regarding unhealthy foods and children are appalling. The saddening part of it all is that the target market for unhealthy foods and beverages are children and teenagers, at a time when they should instead establish healthy eating habits. Junk foods, through the current aggressive and deceptive marketing to children, have become the greatest worldwide contributors to diabetes, hypertension, and stroke. In America, one out of every three children suffers obesity or is overweight, and this affects their health negatively over their lifetime (Molna...