The two-year programme involves a Good Food Club that children join. It uses the Moshi Monsters online game to engage them in tackling tasks for rewards.
These range from trying new foods to growing vegetables and taking exercise.
There is also a Cookery School that will involve children and parents preparing simple recipes together in after-school classes.
Twenty three schools have been selected to get the initiative underway in the first year. A further 23 will be involved in year two.
HCL’s Carol Weller said the scheme would be closely monitored to measure and evaluate any increase in fruit and vegetable consumption, any increase in numbers taking free school meals and how many parents complete the cookery courses.
“We have plenty of KPI’s (key performance indicators) to check and as the Good Food Club is based online it will help us capture lots of data.”
The University of Hertfordshire will produce a final report for Hertfordshire Public Health based on the information and data collected.
HCL chief executive Lin O’Brien added: “We are hoping to develop a programme that can be adopted for a much wider school audience across the county. I t would be such a waste if this only benefited 40-50 schools.”