Timely topic
During the time of quarantine in Australia, people are more likely to cook more than they have ever cooked before. Home-made cuisine leads an epidemic trend on social media in this time. Sydney Morning Herald also builds a new module for quarantine food recipes, including ways for healthy diet recipes. So, could this trend improve obesity issues in Australia? However, ABC news leads an opposite view that people eat mindlessly and lead a ‘pattern grazing’ to cope with stress and anxiety brought by coronavirus, which may affect national obesity levels.
Why is it important?
Obesity rate in Australia is a hot topic. According to the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (19 Jul 2019), there are 67% of adults and 24% of children aged 5-17 who were overweight or obese in 2017-18. Federal government is under pressure for tackling this issue, and costs for health issues led by obesity are estimated to exceed 2 billion dollars annually.
According to Garvan Institute, one of Australia’s premier medical research institutes, obesity can accelerate Type 2 diabetes, which is the leading cause of infertility in Australia, and it could trigger worse outcomes for other chronic diseases and cancers. What causes obesity, and how to improve this issue are essential topics which need to address. I am going to propose a feature piece about this health issue and want to call for healthy home-made food.
Structure of the piece
I am going to start the piece with home-made food epidemic in this specific time. Then I would like to focus on Australian’s diets and food supply in supermarkets. Last year, Labor’s election pledges to consider steps to improve Australian diets, The Conversation reported this and also indicated many packaged food and drinks available in local supermarkets contain excessive saturated fat, sugar, and salt, which are unhealthy and should be consumed in small amounts.
I would like to interview Garvan Institute mentioned above, they lead an obesity research including factors that cause and affect obesity. I would also like to contact Healthdirect as my interviewee, which is a non-profit Australian health advice organization supported by government. I have a friend who is a postgraduate of Public Health in the University of Sydney, I also want to invite her to share some of her advice.
Multimedia, Hypertext and Interactivity
In terms of multimedia, hypertext, and interactivity of my feature:
- Infographics on Australia obesity statistics
- Images of healthy home-made food
- Some photos I took for my own home-made food
- A video of community grassroots solutions towards obesity created by ABC News
- Strong SEO headline and Hyperlinks to my sources
- As for interactivity, my own contact information and sharing links will be presented.
- A poll on home-made food could also be possible to be embedded to enhance interactivity.
Target audience and desired publication
The feature piece targets children aged 5-17, 24% of them are overweight in Australia. Australia’s Children found that childhood is an essential time for healthy habits development, including healthy diets habits and mental health. Obesity is a major issue in Australia, popularizing healthy information for children and teenagers is helpful to foundation for their future wellbeing, which can also contribute to decrease of the future obesity rate in Australia.
I would like to publish this piece on Lifehacker, a website to provide tips for healthy life, BuzzFeed News, most audiences of which are young people, and Sydney Morning Herald, which has a specific module named good food.
Hi Dear Saiji:
It’s a really interesting and timely topic for a feature article. Especially for youth and adults, they are all obsessed with unhealthy food and forming an unhealthy eating habit including myself. I quite like your storytelling structure and writing style. It is well-structured with subheadings and bullet points, and you explain each section very clearly. While I was wondering why you chose a few publications such as Lifehacker and Sydney Morning Herald. So I would suggest you could list your reasons more clearly to the readers. I like that you have embedded hyperlinks for almost every particular source that helps the reader understand further about your topic. And you provide many professional diagrams and statistics to support your story, which is very helpful to enhance story credibility for readers. Besides, I noticed the feature image is created by yourself, it is very creative and interesting. I wish you could take more images and visual elements for your story to make your story more attractive. It is a very good proposal. I am looking forward to seeing your story.
Well done, Siji
siyu hu
Thank you very much, Siyu. I’m very appreciated that you like the feature. Your suggestion is really helpful, I just list the desired publications, but don’t introduce each clearly, so it may make readers confused. I’m very happy that you like my feature took by myself! Thank you again for your kindness and suggestion.