Where Did The Blue M&M Go?

The Hare Economy reorganizes the candy factory.

David DeMay | July 2, 2026

In three previous essays I argued that modern public panic follows a single repeatable script: detect something, strip away quantitative context, declare a crisis, and reorganize enormous institutions around the alarm before the slow, rigorous science has had time to deliver its verdict. I called the media the hare and peer-reviewed science the tortoise. I argued that all serious attention belongs on the tortoise.

This month, the hare reorganized a candy factory.

Beginning in August 2026, Mars, Inc. will sell a new line of synthetic dye-free M&Ms. When you open the bag, you will notice something missing. There will be red, orange, yellow, and green candies. There will be no blue ones. There will be no brown ones. Two of the six colors that have defined one of America’s most iconic confections since 1941 will simply be absent — not because they were found to be harmful, not because the science demanded their removal, but because the regulatory hare got to the factory floor before the chemistry had solved the problem the hare created.

The story of the missing blue and brown M&M is, in miniature, the most literal illustration yet of everything this series has been describing.

The pressure behind the change comes from the Make America Healthy Again initiative led by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who directed the FDA in early 2025 to request that food producers phase out petroleum-based synthetic dyes by the end of 2026. Compliance is voluntary, but the institutional momentum is not. Major food manufacturers scrambling to demonstrate good faith launched crash programs to find natural color replacements. Mars reportedly spent millions of dollars and enlisted more than one hundred employees in the effort.

Here is where the chemistry becomes instructive. Mars successfully cracked four colors using natural sources —........

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