M&M’s is removing two colors from the iconic candy after pressure from Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to remove dyes from its products.
Mars Inc., the maker of M&Ms, confirmed to The Wall Street Journal that the brown and blue candies will be missing from bags in the future, as the company said it couldn’t replicate those colors naturally as it could for its red, orange, and yellow candies.
The candy researchers discovered ways to replicate its red, orange, and yellow candies using natural substances such as turmeric and beets, but shades of blue have proven to be more expensive and difficult to create naturally.
Spirulina, a high-protein ingredient often marketed as a superfood, is used by Mars to create the candy’s blue and brown coloring. However, the natural colorant costs more than traditional artificial dyes.
The raw supplement form of spirulina can cost up to $20 per pound, while the concentrate often used for food dyes can cost over $100 per pound. In comparison, turmeric, which is used for the other colors, ranges from $9 to $11 per pound.
The Wall Street Journal reports that spirulina has been clogging spray nozzles at Mars’s factory, creating buildup in the equipment and posing possible safety and health risks.
M&Ms is debuting the new dye-free bag of candy for its 85th anniversary. Initially, the company didn’t want to proceed with launching the product without its full rainbow, with executives feeling “the sunset vibes were too strong,” according to the Wall Street Journal.
Anton Vincent, who leads Mars’s North America snacks operations, told the Journal that replacing the candies “was a daunting situation” since “you’re messing with an 85-year-old icon.”
The company decided to move ahead with putting out the dye-free candy bag but said they are not eliminating the blue and brown candies completely, aiming to have all the candies in the bag with natural coloring by 2028.
The move comes after pressure from Kennedy through his Make America Healthy Again movement. Mars pledged in 2025 to offer some options for its iconic candies without the dyes, committing to using colors derived from natural sources.
“At Mars Wrigley, we are in the business of delighting and treating the millions of consumers who love our products,” Vincent said in a press release at the time. “Our approach is always consumer-focused and science-led, and all of our delicious Mars Wrigley products meet the high standards and applicable regulations set by food safety authorities around the world, including the FDA.”
The move reaffirms Mars’s 2016 pledge to remove all “all artificial colors” from its products, a commitment the company later scaled back after determining that consumers showed little interest in the change.
M&M’s have become the latest candy part of the Mars brand, shifting to natural ingredients. Last year, the company announced it had stopped adding titanium dioxide to Skittles, an additive that was banned in the European Union in 2022 because of possible health risks.
For these efforts, Kennedy added Mars to a list of corporations that pledged to remove artificial dyes from some of their products.
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Kennedy has made eliminating petroleum-based food dyes from the U.S. food supply a top priority within his department.
His office formally banned four petroleum-based artificial food dyes, revoking authorization from the Food and Drug Administration for brominated vegetable oil, Red Dye No. 3, Citrus Red No. 2, and Orange B.