Listen to “Not Even M&M’s Safe from MAHA” on Spreaker.
The MAHA movement is making a mess of one of America’s most iconic candies: M&M’s. Thanks a lot, RFK Jr.
The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday that Mars is preparing to launch a version of M&M’s made without artificial dyes. The product will hit Amazon in August. That sounds simple enough until you realize the company produces roughly 600 million M&M’s every day. Mars has figured out how to replace some of the traditional colors using ingredients like beets and turmeric. Red? No problem. Orange? Yellow? They’ve solved those, too.
Blue, however, has become a nightmare.
Nature doesn’t offer many reliable sources of the color blue. Mars settled on spirulina, an algae often marketed as a superfood. The problem is that spirulina doesn’t behave like the artificial dye it replaces. It clogs equipment, foams during production, leaves sticky residue inside machinery and requires far larger quantities to achieve a similar color.
Mars now must modify hundreds of machines and invest millions of dollars just to make blue candy blue.
Who pays for that? You do, of course… courtesy of the federal government and legislation like that passed here in West Virginia. Thanks, populist West Virginia Republicans.
The irony is that blue M&M’s didn’t even exist until 1995, when consumers voted to replace the tan M&M with blue. The market brought the product to existence, and the government will likely kill it.
Today, that color has become the biggest obstacle standing between Mars and its (or RFK Jr’s) goal of producing naturally colored candy. In fact, the first generation of these new M&M’s won’t even include blue or brown candies because brown coloring also relies on blue dye. Can you still call them M&M’s?
What’s beneficial about this story is how clearly it illustrates the challenge of translating political goals into real-world manufacturing. The near impossibility of it. More specifically, goals dreamed up by activist groups and embraced by politicians eager to follow them with zero regard for market economies and consumer bents.
Whether you support Kennedy’s push to eliminate artificial dyes — backed by many West Virginia lawmakers and a governor eager to overturn the market applecart — or believe the science remains unsettled, the practical reality is undeniable.
Changing something as seemingly simple as the color of a piece of candy requires years of research, millions of dollars, factory upgrades, supply-chain changes and hundreds of employees dedicated to solving a problem most consumers never even noticed. If consumers cared, they would stop buying M&M’s – that used to be how manufacturers made decisions before this recent return to populist philosophy.
Compare that reality to the sales pitch. Getting rid of dyes was supposed to be easy. Simple. Inexpensive.
It isn’t.
And yet, sadly, Mars is moving ahead. The company says consumers can’t tell the difference in taste, and it hopes to eventually offer all six traditional colors using natural ingredients. That seems less like a choice and more like a pressure campaign the company doesn’t want to fight. Business likes products more than pro-longed fights with Uncle Sam. Tough to blame them. An ongoing battle with a government regulator isn’t exactly a plus for an industry.
It’s a reminder that Washington can always be counted on to complicate something that was working just fine. Add Charleston to the list; many would argue it was already on the list. Fair point.
It’s been fun “real” blue M&M’s. I hope you make it.
If not, maybe we’ll meet again one day if America ever returns to the principles of a free market, instead of the whims of politicians.
The Journal reported, “Mars is aiming to offer its naturally colored M&M’s in all six colors by 2028 (aligned with West Virginia’s now passed law). The company stopped short of saying whether artificially dyed M&M’s will disappear from shelves after that time.”