Increasing healthy menu items and limiting fatty and sugary options in school tuckshops is supposed to help save children from obesity and ill-health.
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But it could also be contributing to the demise of tuckshops as children shun the salad wrap sandwich and spend their lunch money on junk food before or after school.
Parents' groups and the ACT government hope a 21st century solution will help ensure more children eat well at lunchtime and that community-run public school canteens remain financially viable.
A taskforce on school canteens has endorsed a government decision to budget $200,000 for a range of measures to help school canteens, including funding to establish online ordering systems.
Education Minister Joy Burch will publicly release the taskforce's recommendations on Monday. Ms Burch said the funds budgeted to help canteens would be provided to the Council of Parents and Citizens to administer as grants to schools.
"This will support P&C-run canteen services in public schools, promote healthy food choices for students and provide access to online-ordering services,'' she said.
Hugh Boulter, who represented the Council of Parents and Citizens Associations on the taskforce, said online ordering would help families and canteens. Mr Boulter said parents could use the internet to order lunches for their children, or could choose to allow high school students to order their own meals.
"Money can be loaded up on the system and then spent,'' he said.
"But it's spent within the canteen space, rather than perhaps at McDonald's if they're given cash or something like that.'' Mr Boulter said online ordering, already used in some public schools, would also help increase the efficiency of canteens and reduce wastage.
The Canberra Times revealed in February that 19 parent-run government school canteens had closed in recent years, while 16 had been outsourced to the private sector.
The canteen taskforce report said some children avoided healthy canteen "green'' or "amber'' food by purchasing "their red food before or after school''.
Mr Boulter said it was better for school canteens to be community-run, rather than outsourced to the private sector.
"If you outsource, they are typically profit-based and therefore they are going to be driving outcomes around what sells the fastest, what sells the most and there's no regard for whether it's healthy or indifferent, despite whatever contracts or menus might say,'' he said.
