Forget the easily-manipulated "Nutrition Facts" labels on food containers. Unless you're prepared to scrutinize and compare most processed and packaged food products every time you eat them, an easier way to judge the nutrition (or lack thereof) should exist.

In Maine, a "gold star" food rating system that was designed to give customers an idea about healthy food products seems to be working as intended.

The supermarket chain Hannaford Bros. came up with the system that ranks foods with a series of stars (one to three of them), so that hurried customers (read: almost all of us) could instantly gauge healthy foods from unhealthy foods. I'd suspect that sugary, artificially colored breakfast cereals received no stars, while whole-grain, uncolored breakfast cereals probably garnered at least one star.

Why don't other grocery chains do something like this?