What happens behind the window has them peachy keen about fruit and vegetables.

Canteen manager Colin Willis told his contemporaries at an expo in Dubbo this week that it was a "very effective" innovation "where we swirl, chop, peel or slinky any fruit or vegies students bring in from home free of charge".

"It's our way of encouraging kids in a practical way to eat more fruit and vegies," he said.

The annual expo brought together school canteen managers from throughout the Western NSW and Far West NSW local health districts.

Western NSW Local Health District health promotion officer Julie Smith said it aimed to provide managers with ideas and information that would help them to help children choose healthy food to eat.

Each manager received a "goody bag" with samples of canteen-approved food.

The 2010 Schools Physical Activity and Nutrition Survey revealed that, while rates of overweight and obesity in NSW school students had plateaued, 22.8 per cent of them still needed to slim down.

A guest speaker at the expo, the Healthy Kids Association's Chris Tate, indicated that school canteens were helping nip obesity in the bud.

"School canteens play a vital role in supporting students to develop healthy eating patterns early in life," he said.

Mr Tate also encouraged the managers to be creative.

"Kids are clever consumers and very discerning. It's our job to make sure we provide them with a variety of fresh food choices that are good value in terms of appeal, price, nutritional value and customer satisfaction," he said.

Many of the expo participants were already proven converts to the cause of healthy minds and bodies.

Cathy Dries, canteen manager at Dubbo's St John's Primary School, said they placed "a lot of emphasis in making sure we look after the whole child".

"Learning about healthy eating in the classroom is really important, but we need to support and reinforce these messages through our school canteen," she said.

"Our school has worked really hard to revamp our menu and now we only sell canteen-approved foods. We use wholemeal bread only, we promote salads and salad wraps and we slinky apples for free."

kim.bartley@ruralpress.com