If the blue or brown M&Ms are your favorites… Don’t worry, they’re not going anywhere… mostly. As of August, new all-natural M&M packs will be available on Amazon, and these will include only four of M&Ms iconic colors: red, green, yellow, and orange. These FD&C-free M&Ms, which will soon be available on Amazon, will lose blue and brown M&Ms. And, in addition to two lost colors, Mars will stop using artificial dyes in M&Ms altogether for these packs. But other bags of M&M’s, with all colors, will continue to be available as usual.
Mars isn’t the first company to consciously make new products with fewer additives. With a controversial new Trump and Robert F. Kennedy Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) initiative, artificial dyes have begun disappearing from food products. From Nestle and Hershey in candy to Simply NKD (Doritos/Cheetos without the red 40), this health-conscious push is changing the snacking game.
But why will brown and blue M&Ms specifically be missing from (only) these FD&C-free products? According to a Wall Street Journal interview with the company, red, orange, yellow, and green were easy to recreate naturally. From beets to turmeric, there is no shortage of those colors in the natural world. However, brown and blue created problems. Mars said the substitute they were considering, a teal-ish algae called spirulina, is too expensive to buy en masse. For brown, the company has always mixed blue, red, and yellow dyes, which also becomes expensive to do.
This comes only 30 years after the public voted to replace the tan M&M (don’t ask me what Mars was thinking with that one) with blue. Candy-lovers were able to choose between blue, pink, and purple, and with a 54% vote, blue won.
The company hasn’t given up entirely on getting FD&C-free versions of the fan favorite blue and brown colors. They are working to develop purple, brown, and blue dyes that work with their budget. The fortunate part is every M&M tastes the same (I don’t want to hear anybody negate that, it’s true), so despite a slightly less colorful variety, the signature chocolatey flavor isn’t going anywhere.
Artificial dye-free packs will begin rolling out in August. Until the company finds a good dye alternative for brown and blue, they will not appear in these new packages. However, if you need blue and brown M&Ms in your life, you can still find them in all other M&M products.
Originally published on July 2, 2026.