M&M's, Skittles and Starburst debut versions without artificial food dyes
Some of the country's most recognizable candies are getting a makeover.
Starting Thursday, new versions of M&M's, Skittles and Starburst made without artificial food dyes are available to consumers on Amazon.
Mars, the company behind the candies, gave ABC News an exclusive look inside its labs and factories across the country to see how it developed the new versions using colors found in nature.
The new colors include blends of beet juice for red, turmeric for yellow and a combination of turmeric, beet juice, and spirulina for green. As well as beta-carotene, and carotenals for orange.
For Mars, one of the biggest challenges was finding new colors that could stay consistent while being produced at a large scale.
"I think it's twofold. I think it's the vibrancy. And I think the scale, we need to be consistent," Claire Hewitt, senior director of ingredient transformation at Mars, told ABC News' Rebecca Jarvis in an interview that aired on Thursday on "Good Morning America."
Hewitt said the company has spent more than a decade researching, testing, and developing new formulas and manufacturing capabilities. She said the company spoke with more than 13,000 consumers over the past year about the changes.
"The good news is they're really open to the tone, hue changing slightly," Hewitt said. "What they're absolutely not open to is the taste changing."
While Mars has found alternatives for several of M&M's signature colors, blue and brown have proven more difficult, according to Hewitt.
"Blue is the challenge because there aren't very many blue vegetables and things that we consume every day," she said.
The company is using spirulina to help create blue, but Hewitt said the ingredient can be difficult to work with when producing candy at a large scale.
She reassured consumers, however, that the colors are "not going away."
Mars faced another challenge at its Skittles factory in Waco, Texas, where researchers worked to perfect a consistent purple color using purple grape.
"The challenge came in the variability of the color from batch to batch," said Jaime Boyes, senior vice president of research and development and quality and food safety for Mars Snacking North America.
Boyes told Jarvis that researchers discovered that candies made with the same formula could still vary in color because of the manufacturing process.
"Our research and development teams had to work in the factory looking at airflow or different process variables to get the color to be very consistent," Boyes said.
The changes from Mars come as artificial food dyes face increased scrutiny in the United States.
In April 2025, the Food and Drug Administration announced plans to work with the food industry to phase out petroleum-based synthetic dyes from the U.S. food supply.
Since then, companies including General Mills, Nestlé USA, Kraft Heinz and Hershey and more have pledged to eliminate certified color additives from some or all of their U.S. products, according to the FDA.
ABC News medical correspondent Dr. Darien Sutton, a board-certified emergency medicine physician, said changing consumer attitudes are also playing a role.
" A large part of food dye additives in terms of the U.S. food supply came from what people wanted, but I think now the public opinion is changing, however, with more information coming in about the possible links to poor outcomes or health outcomes."
He added, "A large part of the motivations from companies to remove these food dyes from their products are from the public."
