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The health and wellness movement that has swept the food industry in the last few years has largely been the domain of food manufacturers and the consumers that purchase their products.

Now retailers are getting into the act with nutritional labeling systems; in-store dietitians; and by partnering with manufacturers to focus on the positive health aspects of packaged foods sold at store level.

These initiatives are not to be confused with the trend of placing satellite doctor's offices in supermarkets. These programs actually enhance the selling of food at grocery retail, rather than adding non-food services such as movie DVDs, banking, and gasoline--to note a few trends in recent years.

The retail operator that first stepped up to the plate in bringing the message directly to shoppers was Hannaford Bros., Scarborough, Maine.

Hannaford developed the Guiding Stars system for its 164 stores in New England and New York state two years ago. Food items throughout the store--produce, dairy, meat, packaged goods--are assigned one, two or three Guiding Stars. The stars indicate a good, better or best nutritional score. The more stars the better. The stars are placed on unit price tags.

Hannaford says it has analyzed, evaluated and rated more than 25,000 food items in its stores using a proprietary formula developed by an expert scientific panel. The criteria support the recommendations of the U.S. Dietary Guidelines for Americans issued in 2005 and offer a quick complement to a product's nutrition facts label and ingredient list.

If a food item is not packaged--fruits, vegetables and meats, for example--the data comes from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

The panel members for Guiding Stars are from the University of North Carolina, Dartmouth School of Medicine, Tufts University, Muskie School of Public Service at the University of Southern Maine, Harvard University and the University of California-Davis.

Critics of Guiding Stars however, say that it rates too few products. An article by Matthew Shulmann in U.S. News and Report notes that "more than 70% of Hannaford's products that have been considered received no stars at all and this ignores too many of a store's offerings and makes it difficult for shoppers to tell which foods may have been just missed the cutoff for a star and which were toward the bottom of the nutrition spectrum."

"That is incorrect," says Julie Greene, Hannaford's director of healthy living. "Guiding Stars rates every edible item sold. However, Guiding Stars highlights only foods that have, on balance, more positive attributes--vitamins, minerals, dietary fiber and whole grains--than negative attributes--trans fat, saturated fat, cholesterol, added sugar and added sodium.

"This is a significant difference between Guiding Stars and other programs that are being developed," says Green. "When we asked our customers what would help them the most when it came to good nutrition, they told us that they wanted to know which items were truly more nutritious, not necessarily which items were ‘less bad' than others in a given category."

Since it rolled out in September 2006, Guiding Stars has had a significant impact on shoppers' buying patterns at Hannaford, says Greene, noting that "sales of products with stars are outpacing those without, in some cases by wide margins. Starred packaged foods like pasta and canned soups sold at 2½ times the rate of unstarred items while sales of breakfast cereals with stars were more than three times higher than those without."

As director of healthy living, Greene helps "develop and execute programs that add value to the shopping experience as it relates to health and nutrition," she explains. "Specifically, our team focuses on breaking down the barriers to good nutrition for our shoppers and families."

Hannaford is owned by Belgium-based Delhaize which also owns Food Lion, Salisbury, N.C., and Tampa-based Sweetbay, (formerly as Kash n' Karry), which had earlier implemented Guiding Stars in its 107 stores in Florida. In July, Food Lion began rolling out Guiding Stars in 1,300 stores in the Southeast.

Hannaford is now ready to license Guiding Stars to other non-Delhaize owned retailers. "The Guiding Starts Licensing has incorporated and will have separate, non-Hannaford staff to focus on licensing the program," says Greene, adding that Mark Doiron, senior vice president, was "recently promoted to executive vice president and is overseeing licensing efforts."