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Pa. Will Allow Some Junk Food at School Bake Sales, Not So NJ or Del.

By Mike DeNardo

HARRISBURG, Pa. (CBS) -- Individual states are deciding how fully they should comply with new federal rules requiring that only healthy foods be sold at school fundraisers.

Bake sales at school could be a thing of the past under new USDA nutrition standards which ban foods  sold in schools with too much sugar, fat, or salt.

But the law also allows individual states to set their own number of fundraiser exemptions. A dozen states have done so, according to the National Association of State Boards of Education.

Pennsylvania is allowing elementary and middle schools to have five fundraisers each year that don't meet the nutrition standards, and high schools are permitted ten.

"The (state education) department did a survey of schools across the state, and most of the schools across Pennsylvania fall into this five or 10 fundraisers that are given every year.  So that's how the department arrived at that," notes Pennsylvania Department of Education spokesman Tim Eller.

New Jersey and Delaware, on the other hand, are not allowing any fundraising exemptions.

 

 

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