The importance of student health and wellbeing was highlighted at the Tasmanian School Canteen Association Expo opened by the Minister for Education and Skills, Nick McKim today.

Mr McKim said there were no simple solutions to developing a positive approach to healthy eating in young people but where schools and communities work together, better results were achieved.

"Students' health, including eating nutritious food, is important if they are to do well at school," he said.

"School canteens play a part in helping to educate and inform children to make healthy eating choices."

"The Tasmanian School Canteen Association offers support to school communities in the areas of canteen foods and management, policy, links to curriculum, marketing and promotion, financial management and food safety and hygiene."

Mr McKim said the Tasmanian Government provides $90,000 a year in funding to the Association to assist in the CoolCAP Canteen Accreditation process.

"The goal of the CoolCAP Canteen Accreditation program is to promote a whole school approach to increasing the availability of safe and healthy food and beverages to Tasmanian school children.

"Of the 170 Tasmanian Government schools that operate a school canteen, I am pleased that 99 of these canteens are either accredited or working towards accreditation with incentives for schools to work towards achieving gold accreditation."

Mr McKim said many schools provide a nutritious and junk food free canteen for their students and they link healthy eating with the learning curriculum and classroom by involving students in the planning of meals.