Natural M&M’s only add to the sugar glut

President Donald Trump is fond of making policy by way of edict: He's signed more executive orders in the first eight months of his term than President Joe Biden did in four years. But, as Deena Shanker writes today, that approach has its limits. Food companies are voluntarily signing on to the Make America Healthy Again agenda, without fully committing to changes. Plus: Foreign buyers return to the US housing market, and quantifying the time crunch for women in their 30s.

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Imagine this: You're the nation's foremost regulator in food and health. Your agency's leadership has called sugar "poison" and (correctly) railed against your citizens' poor diet and its connection to chronic disease. You've said you want artificial dyes out of the food supply by the end of next year.

Then a big candy company announces it's extending its lines into even more candy, and you call it "a win for parents, consumers and public health," to quote a spokesperson for the Food and Drug Administration.

If you're thinking what I'm thinking, then we're thinking this doesn't make much sense at all.

Packages of peanut M&M's candies for sale at a Costco store in San Diego. Photographer: Kevin Carter/Getty Images

Last week, my colleagues at Bloomberg News reported on an announcement from candy maker Mars Inc. that it would offer versions of some of its iconic confections, such as M&M's, made with natural colors, beginning in 2026. The statement posted on its website says the move "extends consumer choice" by adding options without the synthetic dyes that have come under so much scrutiny. "When we have identified fully effective, scalable solutions across the entire portfolio, we will share additional item commitments and timelines," it says.

The announcement doesn't say it will remove any dyes or candies made with them, and the company confirmed to me that it has no plans to do so. Yet, the FDA told my colleagues: "We applaud Mars for removing harmful petroleum-based dyes."

Perhaps the purpose of this line extension is so Mars can sell its artificial-dye-free versions in West Virginia, currently the only place in the country with a dye ban, effective Jan. 1, 2028. The rest of the country can continue to buy Skittles made with ingredients linked to hyperactivity in kids, among other problems. (The company didn't answer whether the West Virginia law was the impetus.) The statement says it will make the naturally hued sweets available nationwide, but it specifies that sales will be "online."

(If line extensions as a form of political appeasement sounds familiar, it's because the Coca-Cola Co. announced plans to do the same thing, adding cane-sugar-sweetened drinks to its lineup but not removing those with high-fructose corn syrup.)

I reached out to some of the advocates who've been working on this issue for years. Unlike the FDA, none applauded the candies. Although they were critical of Mars, they also had choice words for the non-regulatory approach from the federal government.

It's a "weak commitment," says Thomas Galligan, the principal scientist for food additives and supplements at the consumer advocacy group Center for Science in the Public Interest. He recalled Mars' promise almost 10 years ago to abandon the dyes, which it later decided it'd rather not do, thank you very much.

To Brian Ronholm, the director of food policy for Consumer Reports, it shows the problem with the approach the Trump administration has taken on the issue. "It's relying on companies to do this voluntarily, and they've demonstrated that they don't want to go down this path," he tells me. "The only way to get a consumer benefit from this is a federal ban enforceable across the board."

Scott Faber, senior vice president of government affairs at Environmental Working Group, referred to the "graveyard of voluntary industry commitments" and emphasized the need for a federal ban to actually remove synthetic dyes from the market. Instead, he says, "White House leadership believes they can speak reformulation into existence without rules."

Health and Human Services spokesperson Andrew Nixon didn't have anything further to say on Mars specifically but told me, "Dozens of companies have already stepped up voluntarily to remove artificial dyes from their products because they recognize that Americans deserve healthier options on store shelves. The FDA applauds those efforts."

If President Donald Trump and HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. are serious about removing dyes, they can start the process of banning them at the federal level. In the meantime, Mars has made other Big Food companies—including Kraft Heinz, General Mills, Kellogg and more—that have agreed to voluntary removals look like fools; all they had to do was offer a natural dyes option to win administration applause.

RELATED: In 2015 the maker of Welch's Fruit Snacks, PIM Brands Inc., started using turmeric and annatto instead of Yellow 5 in its fruit snacks, in part because synthetic dyes were losing favor abroad. The top-selling mixed fruit variety of gummy snacks is now free of artificial dyes, just in time for back-to-school season. Go inside the factory to see how the lunch box staple is made.

Photograph: Adam Golfer for Bloomberg Businessweek

IN BLOOMBERG OPINION: Michael R. Bloomberg writes that RFK Jr. is sabotaging Trump's health legacy by canceling contracts for mRNA vaccine development.

In Brief

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Who's Buying Homes in the US Now?

Malkovich. Source: Luka Malkovich

In 2018, Luka Malkovich bought two duplexes in Milwaukee for about $100,000 each. The rental properties became a steady source of passive income, helping him to buy an additional six properties in Wisconsin. The now 30-year-old conducts most of his business from afar, splitting his time between the US, Serbia and his home country of Montenegro. From a real estate standpoint, he says, there's no better bet than America. "It doesn't matter the administration, doesn't matter the president—it's always the US," Malkovich says. "The perfect time to invest here is always five years ago."

Malkovich is too young to have experienced the 2008 housing crisis as a homeowner, but many foreigners hold the same optimistic view of the market. Sales of existing US real estate to non-US citizens hit $56 billion in the year through March, up 33% from the same period the year before, according to a report by the National Association of Realtors (NAR). The more than 78,000 existing properties sold to foreign buyers in that time totaled far fewer than what sales reached at the peak of such purchases, in 2017, but they represent the first increase in eight years.

These sales declined from the early years of the first Trump administration into the Covid-19 pandemic, as a strong dollar and a sluggish economic recovery in other parts of the world subdued demand. In recent years, elevated mortgage rates and home prices have kept many US citizens on the sidelines of the American housing market. While that's contributed to the worst selling season in more than a decade, it's also created less competition for foreigners, who often buy in cash and aren't always attached to specific locations. Although sales to foreigners account for only 2.5% of the existing US real estate market, the increased demand isn't helping a once-in-a-generation affordability crisis that's shutting out many Americans.

Augusta Saraiva writes about the changing market conditions: Foreigners Are Buying US Homes Again While Americans Get Sidelined

Modern Parenting Has a Cost at Work

Illustration: Tameem Sankari for Bloomberg Businessweek

By the time they hit their mid-30s, women raised on the expectation of "having it all" often face a rude reality: There are only so many hours in the day. Juggling full-time jobs, young children and household tasks leaves scores of women burned out and exhausted. Corinne Low, a professor of business economics and public policy at the Wharton School, calls this familiar phenomenon "the squeeze." It shows up clearly in time use data the US government collects from households, she says: "You see just this mountain in child care and housework time at the same time as women are trying to invest in their careers." For men, the time use impact of those converging demands looks more like "a little anthill," she says.

In her forthcoming book, Having It All: What Data Tells Us About Women's Lives and Getting the Most Out of Yours, Low presents a powerful case that the squeeze reverberates through families' lives long after kids are out of diapers. For the typical US woman, time expenditure at home peaks before income does. This means women can't afford to outsource tasks such as housecleaning or food preparation so they can carve out more hours to focus on getting ahead at work. Their careers can suffer: Some move into less taxing, lower-paying jobs or drop out of the workforce entirely. Others keep grinding but get passed over for promotions. Low cites a study from Sweden that found companies don't give as many promotions to women as men—even women who never have children—to avoid the work disruption and cost of a potential maternity leave.

In our Curiousity Gap series, Klara Auerbach and Laura Bliss explain the cost in a series of charts: Women's Earnings Never Really Recover After They Have Children

Pressure on Drug Prices

$499

That's how much Novo Nordisk will charge cash-paying patients for Ozempic, after the diabetes shot became the poster child for high US drug prices. Ozempic is widely covered by insurance, but for those without it, the change halves the US list price.

Demand From Patients

"If you have patient advocacy organizations saying 'Give it to us, we have nothing better,' that doesn't force the industry to make better products. That's worse for patients in the long run."

Holly Fernandez Lynch

A professor of medical ethics at the University of Pennsylvania

Parents of boys with Duchenne muscular dystrophy demanded the FDA restore access to the drug Elevidys after health officials asked Sarepta Therapeutics to stop selling it. Some experts worry that patient groups' growing influence is leading to the approval of drugs that may not work and could sometimes be dangerous.