Mars, the maker of M&M's, said it will launch a new U.S. version of the candy in August without artificial food dyes. The change comes as part of the “Make America Healthy Again” push to reduce artificial ingredients in food, and it will coincide with the brand’s 85th anniversary.
The shift to natural ingredients carries a cost: Mars expects to remove two colors long associated with M&M's, blue and brown, because it could not recreate them with natural ingredients at a commercially viable price. Anton Vincent, president of Mars North America snacks and global ice cream, called it “a challenging and daunting situation” and said, “You’re dealing with an 85-year-old icon.”
The company said blue, added to the brand in 1995 after a public vote, proved especially difficult to reproduce. Researchers were able to recreate other colors using natural ingredients, but blue relied heavily on spirulina, an algae-derived pigment that requires much larger quantities to achieve the same intensity. That also complicated production of the brown candies, according to Mars.
Claire Hewitt, a senior Mars executive, said, “This is the hardest thing I’ve had to do in my career.” The move reflects a broader food industry trend, with major manufacturers under growing consumer and regulatory pressure to replace artificial additives with natural alternatives.
