These girls ditched junk food all for a good cause!

A cake sale, a car boot sale, or something similar might have been the obvious choices, but not for Naomi. Instead, the 14-year-old Ballymoney girl chose to stop eating junk food for a month and managed to persuade three of her closest friends to do the same.

It was a sacrifice that required some thought. After all, the girls had just ended their school term and were looking foward to 'doing their own thing' during the summer and if that meant indulging in a little of what they fancied, few could have blamed them.

But true to their word, the girls stuck to the task and for one month they ditched chocolate, burgers, chips, puddings, sweets, ice cream; in fact anything that could have been considered good or bad for you whatever way you looked at it.

For all of them it was a tough task and for Naomi in particular it proved a tough battle given that she had to spend a family holiday at Disney World and couldn't even enjoy her favourite sweet - ice cream.

On Saturday last, however, the fruits of their labours were made public when Naomi and her pals, Hannah Chestnutt (13), Danie Millar (15) and Megan McAleese (14) handed over a total of 240.50p. to John Dunlop, treasurer of the Causeway Fundraising Group for Macmillan Cancer.

John offered his thanks and said the girls deserved credit for coming up with a novel way of raising the money which he added would greatly assist his Group.

Hannah, Naomi and Megan all attend Coleraine Girls' High School while Danie is a student at North Coast Integrated. It is fair to say that after the month was over, the girls, one of whom even sacrificed salt during the monthly 'fast', embarked on something of a binge and admitted to consuming up to three times as much 'junk'.

Junking the junk proved a tough task for the girls, but they are more than happy that they stuck to their guns and never once broke their promises. They would like to thank all those who helped sponsor them and haven't ruled out doing something similar in the future for another charity.