Marcus Rashford brings food brand giants together to tackle child food poverty

Marcus Rashford brings food brand giants together to tackle child food poverty

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Media caption"You should feel free, if you want to ask for help, to ask for help" - Rashford speaks to BBC Breakfast's Sally Nugent

Footballer Marcus Rashford has formed a taskforce with some of the UK's biggest food brands to try to help reduce child food poverty.

The 22-year-old Manchester United forward successfully campaigned to extend free school meals this summer.

He has spoken about his own experiences of using a food voucher scheme as a child and was praised for pressing the government into a U-turn on the issue.

He has written to MPs, outlining the help he feels some families still need.

The group of supermarkets, businesses and charities - including Aldi, Asda, Co-op, Deliveroo, FareShare, Food Foundation, Iceland, Kellogg's, Lidl, Sainsbury's, Tesco and Waitrose - have formed a taskforce and backed proposals from the National Food Strategy, an independent review of UK food policy.

Mr Rashford said he was "confident" the group could help change lives "for the better".

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Speaking to BBC Breakfast, he said the move to extend free school meals over the summer had been a "short-term solution" to stopping children from going hungry, but it "wasn't going to work in the long run".

"We had to think about the best way to do it, to think about how these families can eat long term and not have any issues," he said.

Mr Rashford is hoping that, with a bigger team of experts around him, he might be able to help more children.

"We wanted to do it the best way we could, introduce the best people into our group, and see if using them [we] can push it even more."