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When M&M’s rolls out a natural version of its candy this August, two popular colors will be casualties: blue and brown. Mars, the candy’s maker, pledged to phase out synthetic dyes after pressure from Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. The company has spent millions trying to re-create M&M’s full rainbow using natural ingredients, but blue and brown have been nearly impossible to nail, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Mars cracked red, orange, yellow and green using sources like beets and turmeric. Blue, however, was an unwieldy beast. The company tried spirulina, a blue-green algae you can find in your Whole Foods smoothie mix, but it costs a lot more and requires roughly seven times the amount to hit the right shade. Brown is also hard to replicate naturally, because it contains a surprising amount of blue. Who knew?
This isn’t the first time M&M’s have received outside pressure to change. A few years ago, it introduced a set of diverse spokescandies, got slammed as too woke and pulled them. Now it’s the colors themselves under the microscope.