Americans struggle to understand (or continue to blatantly ignore) the nutrition facts labels on the foods in our stores. That's the reality.

Clearly, we didn't get to be a fat nation riddled with diabetes, clogged arteries and heart disease by making a high proportion of smart eating decisions. We got this way because taste, price and dozens of other marketing messages, rather than nutrition, have been foremost in our purchase decisions at the shelf. As the food industry looked around and noticed that our pre-teens, teens, young adults and even we ourselves needed to buy larger size pants, the marketing pundits decided it was time. Time to create yet another marketing system that could differentiate their brand, and hopefully enhance sales. But sadly the result was little more than consumer confusion.

Then came the coalitions which were designed to replace each brands' own systems. The concept was good: develop an objective nutrition ratings standard so the public would have a fairer shot at making the right choices that could enhance their lives. But a "standard" evolved into more competition: NuVal, the GoodGuide web measurement tool, Healthy Ideas, Smart Choices, Guiding Stars, Healthy Elements, Nutritional Spotlight, nutritionIQ, TAG Nutrition Labeling, but our bet at The Lempert Report is that shoppers see only a scramble and don't know which of these nutrition ratings to trust.

Which is why the burden falls back on the shoulders of our grocers to endorse a single standard with an open algorithm that shoppers, brands and retailers can all understand and agree on. The selection process and the eventual selected program require transparency. The standard must come from a third-party group backed by food and public health science (no need to recreate here) rather than from manufacturers who may be trying to promote healthy aspects of foods that aren't really that nutritious. Nor should the program become a manipulated tool to make money. The final representations of nutritional value on product packages will need to be clear, unequivocal and simple for the public to understand.

There's much more at stake here than the competitiveness of CPG brands and the retailers that sell them. If industry members purport to elevate their companies to a level of objectivity that serves the best interests of consumers and shoppers, that's exactly what they must do. Nutritional ratings cannot become a stealth path to winning share. This has the potential, in our view, to be a momentous turning point in the nation's distribution of food and could well be the magic bullet for our nation's ailing health care crisis.