Getting kids to make the right choices when it comes to mealtime is one of the great ongoing struggles of parenthood. The influx of vending machines, fast food and multiple-choice menus into school cafeterias has only served to compound the problem.

In his 2004 documentary "Super Size Me," filmmaker Morgan Spurlock visited a middle school in Naperville, Ill., where students are able to pick and choose the items they want to eat from a very large array. One student Spurlock talks to is having fries and a cookie for lunch. Another's lunch consists of two bags of chips, a pretzel, a candy bar, and a bottle of Gatorade.

So much for trusting kids to make the right food choices. After all, adults frequently struggle with eating right — how much harder it must be, then, for young people to choose healthy food over what tastes the best.

Increasingly, schools are giving parents a powerful tool in this battle, and a tool that also serves to make the cafeteria operation more efficient.

Several school cafeteria POS systems now eliminate cash from the lunchroom, replacing it with stored-value cards, biometric payment or other identifiers. In addition to taking cash out of the equation — always a good idea in foodservice — such systems make it possible for parents to log in remotely and view what their child is purchasing, set restrictions and download nutritional information.

Altoona, Pa.-based Food Service Solutions Inc. offers its FSS POSitive ID System, which is integrated not only to the cafeteria's back-office but also to the Web domain www.myschoolaccount.com. Parents are given a unique username and password; when they log in, they can monitor food choices and make payments into the student's account.

David Pisanick, account manager for Food Service Solutions, said the cashless system was largely driven by the need to protect the anonymity of students receiving discounted or free meals.

"A school cannot overtly identify students that are on the free or reduced meal program," he said. "With our system, the system charges the student the correct amount for the meal and neither the cashier nor other students know who is paying full price vs. reduced price vs. nothing."

Loganville, Ga.-based Horizon Software International offers a similar solution called MealPay. Tina Bennett, director of the MealPay program, said the need to speed up lines was one of the prime movers behind the company's product.

"Serving times have been dropped drastically," she said. "You can also allocate where the money is spent. For example, if you put $40 on an account, you can say that $30 goes to the meal account and $10 goes to general for a la carte sales." The system also lets parents set up a recurring "auto-replenish" for payment and low-balance reminders.

More research on these key terms:    POS    Prepaid    Biometric

Claudia Moriarty, vice president of LunchByte Systems Inc., said her company's NutriKids system also allows parents to set daily spending limits, alert the school to any food allergies, and set up reminders for special occasions like birthdays.

Jacob Beri, director of marketing for PCS Revenue Control Systems of Englewood Cliffs, N.J., said his company's system has an added strength: the parental login can be used for other school payment needs besides meals, such as sports events, library fees and transportation charges.

"We are getting more and more districts that want online payment systems due to pressure from parents demanding it," he said.

Prepaid cafeteria systems not only allow unprecedented menu control for both school and parent, they also end the age-old problem of kids losing, forgetting, or having their lunch money stolen.

Each system is different when it comes to specific methods, but most use industry-standard tools like stored-value cards, PIN pads and touchscreens. Several use fingerprint scanning, either standalone or tied to one of the other methods.

Beri pointed out that the PCS system combines a student card with a double-check in the form of the child's picture being shown on the employee-facing screen. For implementations using a PIN pad, a second identifier such as a birthdate is required in addition to the I.D. number.

MealPay's Bennett said that kids have embraced the system, not only because of its "cool factor" but because they like the fact that the cashiers know when it is their birthday, or if there are certain foods they can't eat.

Pisanick pointed to the biometric feature as a particularly compelling aspect for kids.

"We have found that participation in the school lunch program increases with an automated system, especially with the biometric identification option," he said. "Kids like to put their finger on the reader to access their account."

But Beri notes that for all the problems these systems solve, one remains that will always require good old-fashioned human intervention.

"As for trading the food after the purchase is made, I am afraid there is no way of avoiding it short of policing the floor."