MAHA is shaking up your bag of M&M’s.
Starting in August, select packages of the iconic candy sold exclusively on Amazon will no longer include the colors blue or brown. That’s because candy maker Mars will begin what’s expected to be a two-year process of transitioning away from its use of artificial dyes in lieu of dyes made from natural sources.
You don’t have to say goodbye to blue and brown M&M’s chocolates entirely—they’ll still be included in products sold elsewhere online and in stores—but the less-colorful bags of candy are related to Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s “Make America Healthy Again” campaign.
A Mars spokesperson reiterated to Fast Company that “existing varieties of these products that consumers already know and love will continue to be available in stores and online.”
Last year, the Department of Health and Human Services, alongside the Food and Drug Administration, outlined plans to phase out synthetic dyes in foods over the next few years. Though no legislation explicitly bans the substances targeted by the 2025 announcement, Mars is but the latest company to make changes that align with the Trump administration’s wishes. PepsiCo, for example, has launched “Simply Naked” versions of Doritos and Cheetos that don’t have any artificial colors or flavors.
BLUE IS PROVING PROBLEMATIC
While Mars has already come up with all-natural alternatives for the dyes used in the other colors of M&M’s—red, yellow, orange, and green—the McLean, Virginia-based company hasn’t yet figured out the right formulations for blue and brown candies. Finding a natural ingredient to make blue has proven especially difficult, and is key to the brown candies, The Wall Street Journal reported earlier this month.
The company tried spirulina, a type of algae, but that was causing problems because it was gumming up the factory machines, so testing on alternative ingredients continues. The company told USA Today that it will share more information once it has “identified fully effective, scalable solutions across the entire portfolio.”
Rather than waiting until it had the full spectrum of colors sorted, company executives decided to forge ahead with production of the limited-availability packages made without artificial dyes. Mars hopes to offer its naturally-dyed M&M’s in all six colors by 2028, Anton Vincent, who leads the company’s North American snack business, told The Wall Street Journal.
THE MAHA AGENDA
Even if temporary, the color changes mark a major change for an iconic candy with an 85-year tradition. Though to be fair, there have been color changes in the past. In 1995, Mars decided to discontinue the tan M&M and put it up to a nationwide vote of candy lovers to decide on the replacement color, which was when blue got added to the mix.
More recently, Mars caved to some bizarre controversy regarding its colorful candy characters in 2023 and ultimately decided to “take an indefinite pause from the spokescandies.”
Though Mars claims to be “in the business of satisfying and delighting the millions of people who love our products,” it’s now in the business of satisfying the MAHA agenda.
Mars has a team of roughly 100 employees that’s working on its natural-color efforts, with one-quarter of them dedicated solely to blue, as Claire Hewitt, a Mars veteran overseeing the multimillion-dollar initiative, told The Wall Street Journal.
Were it not for the push from Kennedy, Mars might not be putting so much effort behind these changes. In 2016, it announced plans to remove all artificial colors from its food portfolio globally, but reversed course on its candies. “We found that many of our consumers across the world do not, in fact, find artificial colors to be ingredients of concern,” the company notes in a post about its use of artificial colors.
No matter whose concern it was, work continues on figuring out a solution for the color blue. And Mars has made various investments—including upgrading more than 300 machines, installing new accessories, and buying new cleaning equipment—to find a viable option, Hewitt told The Wall Street Journal. “It’s the hardest thing I’ve had to do in my career.”