Consumers looking for healthy foods at Stop & Shop stores are getting help from a new product-labeling system.

The Quincy chain is using green and blue “Healthy Ideas” symbols to identify some 5,000 products that meet nutritional criteria based on the federal Dietary Guidelines for Americans and the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s MyPyramid food guidance system.

“It takes the guesswork out of customers trying to determine which foods are indeed healthy,” said Andrea Astrachan, Stop & Shop’s vice president of consumer affairs. “We know that our customers, especially moms, don’t have time to read every individual nutritional label on every single food they place in their shopping baskets.”

Stop & Shop assembled a panel of nutritionists and physicians - led by Dr. George Blackburn, associate director of the Division of Nutrition at Harvard Medical School - to help develop the program.

Products that merit the Healthy Ideas symbol are low in total fat, saturated fat and cholesterol. They also have healthy sodium levels, reduced sugar and contain at least 10 percent of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s daily recommended amount of fiber, protein, vitamin A or C, calcium or iron.

Healthy Ideas symbols appear on packaging and shelf tags for Stop & Shop’s store brands and on shelf tags only for nationally branded foods. The program’s rollout follows the 2006 launch of Hannaford Supermarkets’ Guiding Stars program, which identifies foods using a good, better and best nutritional ranking system.