Like many mothers, Deborah Deatrick is often short on time, which makes it especially challenging to choose nutritious foods for her family.

So Deatrick recently described being intrigued to find some new "guiding stars" on the crowded cereal shelves at a Hannaford Bros. grocery in Portland, Me. As she wheeled her cart down the aisle, she noticed that both the raisin bran she normally buys and the Quaker Oat Squares favored by her 8-year-old son had small icons with stars beneath them on the shelves, directing consumers to the best nutritional choices. The raisin bran had one star, the squares two.

Online Resources What do all those labels mean? Here are keys to the ratings used at Harris Teeter and Hannaford stores. Harris Teeter Wellness Keys Hannaford Guiding Stars Program » MORE FROM THE HEALTH SECTION Readers Diane Standiford (in photo) and Melanie Miller take the holiday challenge on video. Follow their progress through Jan. 1. Holiday Challenge Tips on Your Phone: This daily tip from Sally will keep you going throughout the challenge. The cost? $4.99. To get started, text LEAN to 99134. Click here to learn more. Take the Holiday Challenge: Find food and exercise goals, Sally's latest columns, worksheets, live discussion and more on the Lean Plate Club Holiday Challenge page. Save & Share Tag This Article  Saving options 1. Save to description:  Headline (required)  Byline 2. Save to notes (255 character max):  Blurb 3. Tag This Article

That surprised Deatrick, who decided to buy the Quaker item -- with the higher nutritional rating -- and not the raisin bran.

"You want to make the most healthful choices," said Deatrick, vice president of community health at MaineHealth, a nonprofit health care system. "What the guidance stars do is help parents make choices right there in the supermarket aisle. . . . It's that kind of nutrition education over time that will really help people to be better shoppers."

At least that's the hope of Hannaford, a 158-store chain in New England and parts of New York. This week, the company plans to unveil the full Guiding Stars program, which it calls "nutritious shopping made simple."

While Guiding Stars appears to be the most comprehensive nutritional guidance program for consumers, it's not the first: In March, Harris Teeter, a chain with stores in the Washington area, introduced "yourwellness," a program that highlights the nutritional content of its store brands on 21 measures, from calcium and fat to sodium.

The Hannaford program goes many steps farther, scoring 27,000 items. (Bottled water, baby food, coffee and tea and oils are not included in the program.)

The 123-year-old company, owned by the Delhaize Group in Belgium, began the Guiding Stars effort after market research showed that "customers want to eat better but are confused by the volume and complexity of nutrition information," said Hannaford spokeswoman Caren Epstein. Eighty-four percent of those polled said they would use a rating system to help buy more-nutritious products.

To meet the challenge of rating thousands of products, the company hired a team of nutrition scientists from Tufts University, Dartmouth Medical School, the University of North Carolina, the University of California, Davis, and Harvard University.

The team drew on nutrition guidelines developed by the U.S. government, the World Health Organization, the National Academy of Sciences and such private groups as the American Heart Association, the American Diabetes Association and the American Dietetics Association.

The scientists then developed a mathematical formula that scores food and beverages on their positive attributes (vitamins and minerals, fiber and whole grains) as well as their less-healthy ingredients (trans fatty acids, saturated fat, cholesterol, added sodium and added sugars). To account for varying portion sizes, they made calculations based on a 100-calorie serving of each product. The price of the products was not factored into the equation.

The team also took into account less-than-healthy foods and beverages that are fortified with added vitamins, minerals or fiber to help overcome their nutritional shortcomings. "We didn't give points for over-fortifying," said Jeffrey Blumberg, a professor of nutrition at Tufts and a member of the scientific team.