(LOOTPRESS) – M&M’s is giving one of America’s most recognizable candies a healthier makeover, announcing it will launch a new version made without artificial food dyes beginning this August.
The dye-free candies will debut as the iconic brand celebrates its 85th anniversary and will initially be sold on Amazon.
Not every color will make the transition right away. Mars announced that blue and brown M&M’s will be excluded from the first artificial dye-free lineup because the company has not yet found a cost-effective way to recreate those colors using natural ingredients.
According to Mars, researchers successfully replicated red, yellow, orange, and green candies with natural colorings, but blue has proven especially difficult. The company said the color relies heavily on spirulina, an algae-based pigment that requires much larger quantities to achieve the same vibrant shade. The challenges with blue also complicated efforts to produce brown candies.
“It was a daunting situation,” Anton Vincent, president of Mars Snacking North America and Global Ice Cream, told The Wall Street Journal. “You’re messing with an 85-year-old icon.”
Claire Hewitt, a Mars executive, described the effort as “the hardest thing I’ve had to do in my career.”
Mars considered replacing the missing colors with purple and pink or offering a three-color mix but ultimately decided to stick with the traditional colors it could successfully recreate.
The company plans to expand the dye-free lineup over the next several years, with a goal of offering its full core color assortment by 2028.
The move comes amid growing pressure to eliminate artificial food dyes from the U.S. food supply. Mars had previously announced plans in 2016 to remove artificial dyes but later abandoned the effort after determining consumers were not demanding the change.
The issue has regained national attention following calls from U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for food manufacturers to phase out artificial dyes from their products.
