SCHOOLS across Connecticut were banned yesterday from selling high-calorie fizzy drinks and junk food in the most radical attempt yet to fight childhood obesity in America.

Children under 11 will also be required to take an extra 20 minutes of exercise a day on top of their normal PE classes.

The rules, praised by parents and condemned by soft-drink companies, are the result of the state Senate passing America’s strictest anti-obesity bill, and mean that all sugary drinks, chocolate and crisps will be banned from all school sites.

The state will not, however, follow Jamie Oliver’s highprofile British healthy eating campaign and attempt to banish burgers and chips from school lunch menus.

Seventeen other states have passed legislation aimed at tackling childhood obesity, but none has gone so far as to impose an outright ban on sugared soft drinks, products of an industry that carries enormous political clout across America and employs an army of corporate lobbyists.

Under the Bill, which faced fierce opposition from some Republicans, junk food snacks and sugared soft drinks sold from vending machines, over the lunch counter or in school shops would be banned.

Schools will not be allowed to sell snacks deemed unhealthy by the state’s Education Department, in a list to be published in January. Diet soft drinks are still allowed.

The Bill was one of the most hotly contested of the Connecticut legislature’s term, with a debate far longer than House and Senate arguments about the death penalty and same-sex marriage.

In a sign of how controversial a move it would be to take on the soft drinks industry, M. Jodi Rell, the State’s Republican governor, has yet to say whether she will sign it into law. Politicians confessed to their own weight problems during the marathon session, with some openly drinking from cans of soft drinks during the debate.

After fierce lobbying by the soft-drink industry, and by some schools which feared a loss of income if the drinks were banned, the weary politicians finally agreed on a compromise, permitting the sales of sugared drinks at school events and sports games.

“This bill supports parents and accomplishes what the people of the state want,” said state Senator Don Williams, a Democrat, who sponsored the Bill. “They want less junk food and healthier choices for their children.”

Over 70 per cent of Connecticut parents backed a ban on soft drinks in schools, according to a recent poll.

Opponents of the Bill point to the fact that the ban will not apply to school lunch menus, which will still be dominated by chips and burgers.

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