OKLAHOMA CITY – Oklahoma has become the latest state to buck Michelle Obama’s “Smart Snack” school food restrictions.

The state board of education this week gave local schools the ability to approve exemptions to the federal school snack restrictions on fat, sodium, sugar and other nutritional elements – with a limit of up to 30 14-day exemptions per semester, KFOR reports.

The Smart Snack restrictions were implemented this school year as the latest phase of the Healthy and Hunger Free Kids Act of 2010, which imposed strict nutrition limitations on foods served in schools that participate in the National School Lunch Program, which is most.

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The regulations are championed by first lady Michelle Obama as a means of fighting childhood obesity through bureaucracy, but have been wildly unsuccessful as more than 1 million students have dropped out of their school lunch program for better alternatives. As a result, hundreds of school districts have also dropped out of the National School Lunch Program to serve students foods they’ll actually eat.

The regulations, which require students to take a fruit or vegetable whether they want it or not, have also generated well over $1 billion in food waste as most students who do continue to eat school lunch simply dump their greens in the garbage.

Several students spoke to the Oklahoma Board of Education before members granted the snack exemptions, and explained what the fundraisers have meant for their schools. Many school fundraisers revolve around selling baked goods or sugary snacks that don’t fit into the federal restrictions, and that reality posed a huge threat to many school programs.

“I’ve seen the lives that we’ve changed in my four years in high school,” Laurin Bixby told board members of the fundraisers at Edmond North High School.

Bixby said her classmates have raised nearly $50,000 selling snacks, money that goes toward helping with hearing loss. It would be a shame to see such a program go away “just because we’re handing out puppy chow and sugary foods in school for one week,” she said, according to KFOR.

“Molly Feigel, from Edmond Memorial H.S., said during their Swine Week fundraiser, they’ve raised nearly $30,000 to help build a daycare for foster kids,” the news site reports.

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The resolution passed by the Oklahoma Board of Education gives local school districts the ability to grant exemptions from the federal snack rules, but maintains a limit set last year of 30 exemptions per school per semester. The fundraisers also cannot take place during breakfast, lunch, or afternoon snack time, NewsOK.com reports.

Last October, the board approved the measure to allow bake sale-type fundraisers to continue, but the latest action transfers authority to local schools to decide the frequency and duration of the exemptions.

The new policy is essentially what board member Bill Price was hoping for last year.

“My initial reaction was to have everything exempted,” Price told NewsOK in October. “I want to leave it up to the school district. I want the local district to have control.”

Not everyone, however, is pleased with the exemptions.

“The calories they consume are items they purchase at school, so we want the healthiest options available for them,” Naomi Amaha, government relations director for the American Heart Association of Oklahoma, told KFOR.

Amaha believes it would be far healthier if students shifted their fundraising strategy to 5k runs, selling non-food items, or hawking fruit.

“I read about a study where a group sold little clementine oranges, and they tied it into Valentine’s Day and they were really successful,” she said.