There's probably no part of the national debate on obesity that raises more concern than the health of America's children.

FMI's new Shopping for Health report, done in conjunction with the publisher of Prevention Magazine, lays out these concerns and the opportunities for retailers very clearly.

All discussion of weight loss begins with the need to balance calorie intake versus calories burned. On this very point, the concern is clearly demonstrated. Nearly 45% of parents feel they have a problem getting their children to eat a healthy diet, and 28% say they don't think their children are getting enough exercise.

Some may be surprised by the exact opposite - that 72% feel their children are getting enough exercise. However, it's clear that this is one case where parents are literally walking the walk. Some 75% of shoppers say they or their spouses exercise with their children. And the percentage exercising with their children rises above 80% for Hispanic parents and parents under the age of 41.

Parents try to influence how their kids are eating by focusing on nutritious products: 67% say they almost always buy nutrition items and another 27% do so regularly. Clearly a major focus on these purchases is on produce as nearly two-thirds of parents say their children are getting five servings of fruits and vegetables every day.

One of the interesting areas of attention is what happens at school during lunchtime, when parents obviously aren't around.

Children from lower income and minority households are much more likely to buy cafeteria meals, possibly due to higher use of lunch subsidy programs. Parents are generally happy with the nutritional quality of cafeteria meals, as nearly 90% say they feel at least somewhat satisfied on that score. However, the percentage saying they are very satisfied with the nutritional quality of cafeteria lunches is only 28%, far below the 65% giving the same very satisfied rating to lunches made at home.

The opportunity for supermarkets to capitalize on these trends and provide help to busy parents runs in a number of directions. Shopping for Health offers some simple suggestions.

1. Use shelf signs or color codes to draw shoppers to nutritious products for children.
2. Build off-shelf displays to highlight products that appeal to parents' needs for nutritional foods that are also easy to prepare.
3. Develop promotions that show the ease of preparing school lunches at home to build on the wide satisfaction shoppers have with those specific meals.

Shopping for Health features a wide array of findings and suggestions on how retailers can better understand shopper concerns and actions about healthy eating, and each chapter features simple merchandising strategies to provide easy methods to find and buy nutritional products. Shopping for Health soon can be found at the FMI Store at www.fmi.org/store/.

Imagine getting ready for your day and checking the weather forecast. Because of a computer glitch, the only information available is estimated wind speed and humidity level. Without knowing the temperature or forecast for precipitation it would be pretty difficult to know how to prepare.

Basing decisions on partial information is difficult if not downright dangerous. That's why we at ACNielsen are so pleased to announce the on time completion of our Homescan(R) consumer panel expansion. Two years in development, the ACNielsen Homescan consumer panel, the consumer packaged goods industry's leading source of consumer and shopper insights, now includes an unrivaled 125,000 households and is delivering vastly more comprehensive and detailed information about American consumers than ever before.

As a result of the MegaPanel expansion, existing Homescan services have been significantly enhanced, numerous new, innovative client solutions have been launched, and more are planned for in 2006 - all designed to provide marketers (both manufacturers and retailers) with unprecedented new insights into consumer and shopper behavior.

To give you an example of how important the expanded panel is, consider the Face Care category. Through the combined food/drug/mass merchandise channel, the category generates nearly $2 billion in sales - a sizeable and important category to be sure. However, those three channels account for just 42% of category sales. As part of our MegaPanel initiative, a new Beauty/Personal Care service will be launched in 2006, providing the industry's most comprehensive measurement of beauty/personal care categories and enabling marketers to identify Beauty/Personal Care consumer segments based on where consumers shop and what they buy. It's one of many new consumer and shopper insights services that are being made possible by the expansion of the Homescan consumer panel.

The panel expansion, along with major investments in Homescan's data collection processes and output infrastructure, is enabling ACNielsen to introduce a host of new solutions to address the most important issues facing today's CPG manufacturers and retailers, including: Category Management and Retail Shopper Insights, New Product Development, Expanded Marketing ROI Measurement, and Ethnic Marketing.

In addition, several specialty panels will be available in early 2006, delivering insights into the unique attitudes, shopping and purchasing behavior of important consumer segments including households with babies, teens, baby boomers and seniors.

There's never been a greater need to understand the nuances of consumer behavior, with marketers trying to serve ever more narrowly defined consumer segments while at the same time trying to identify the factors that drive behavior among these various segments of population. We are extremely pleased to be able to address those needs with our expanded Homescan consumer panel.