The Reformulation Scramble: Nestlé, Hershey, PepsiCo

In July 2025, the Consumer Brands Association — the trade group that represents nearly every major U.S. food and beverage manufacturer — made a remarkable announcement. It called on its member companies to voluntarily eliminate certified artificial dyes from their products by December 31, 2027.

Read that again. The trade association whose entire job is defending the food industry from regulation just told its own members to stop using six FDA-approved dyes. That’s how decisively the ground has shifted. And behind that pledge is one of the largest, most chaotic reformulation efforts the U.S. food industry has ever undertaken.

The Pledge, in Plain English

The Consumer Brands Association’s commitment specifically targets six dyes: Blue 1, Blue 2, Green 3, Red 40, Yellow 5, and Yellow 6. (Red 3 is already on a separate FDA revocation timeline.) Member companies are urged to stop manufacturing food and beverage products with these dyes by the end of 2027, with an earlier target for products served in K-12 schools — those need to be dye-free by the start of the 2026-2027 school year.

Including industry associations like CBA and the American Bakers Association, an HHS spokesperson estimated that nearly 40 percent of the entire consumer packaged goods (CPG) industry has now made public commitments to remove dyes in the near term. That’s a staggering portion of the American grocery basket.

Nestlé USA: The Speed Leader

Among the multinationals, Nestlé USA is moving fastest. The company has committed to eliminating all FD&C synthetic dyes from its U.S. portfolio by mid-2026 — well ahead of the broader 2027 deadline. Over 90 percent of Nestlé’s U.S. products are reportedly already compliant. The remaining reformulations are using gardenia extract, beet juice, caramel color, and other natural alternatives.

Nestlé’s U.S. portfolio includes brands like Toll House, DiGiorno, Coffee Mate, Stouffer’s, and a long list of others. When mid-2026 hits, that’s a meaningful chunk of the freezer aisle and bakery section that will have visibly changed.

Hershey: Confections Get Reworked

Hershey has committed to removing synthetic dyes from all of its U.S. confections by the end of 2027. That includes Jolly Ranchers, Twizzlers, and Ice Breakers — some of the most visually intense, dye-dependent products in American candy. Reformulating these to use natural alternatives without losing brand recognition is a significant technical challenge. The company’s product developers are reportedly working with combinations of natural pigments to match the existing color profiles as closely as possible.

The hardest products to reformulate are the ones with the brightest, most artificial-looking colors. Hershey’s candy line includes some of the worst offenders. Watching whether the new versions feel like the same product to consumers is going to be a real test.

PepsiCo: The Quiet Mover

PepsiCo is in an interesting position. The company has not made as splashy a pledge as Kraft Heinz or General Mills, but it’s reportedly working aggressively behind the scenes. CEO Ramon Laguarta has emphasized that PepsiCo wants to highlight the “real food” qualities of its biggest snack lines — noting that potato chips, stripped of synthetic colors and flavors, are essentially “the most simple, no artificial ingredients” snack. Lay’s and Tostitos brands began transitioning to dye-free and artificial-flavor-free formulations by the end of 2025, with a full dye-free portfolio targeted for 2027.

PepsiCo’s footprint extends far beyond chips, though — it includes Doritos, Cheetos, Quaker, Gatorade, Mountain Dew, and many more brands with significant dye usage. The full reformulation will be one of the largest single-company efforts in the industry.

Conagra: Already Doing It

Conagra Brands has been quietly reformulating for years and is now formalizing the work. The company has pledged that its entire U.S. frozen food portfolio — including Healthy Choice, Marie Callender’s, and Birds Eye — will be 100 percent free from FD&C colors by the end of 2025. K-12 school products are slated to be dye-free by the 2026-2027 school year, with the rest of the U.S. retail portfolio following by the end of 2027.

Some Conagra reformulations are already on shelves. Orville Redenbacher’s popcorn now gets its golden hue from annatto. Vlasic pickles swapped Yellow 5 for turmeric. These are the kinds of quiet, behind-the-scenes changes that don’t make headlines but quietly improve millions of pantries.

The Real Bottleneck: Natural Color Supply

Here’s a fact that doesn’t get enough attention. The food industry’s ability to reformulate isn’t just limited by recipe development — it’s limited by raw material supply. Beetroot, butterfly pea flowers, spirulina, gardenia, paprika, and the other natural color sources have to be grown, harvested, and processed at industrial scale. That supply chain didn’t exist three years ago.

Specialty ingredient suppliers have been racing to scale up. Some have been working on butterfly pea flower agriculture for over a decade in anticipation of exactly this moment. Others are scrambling to plant fields, build extraction facilities, and certify supply lines. The companies that win the natural color supply race over the next two years will become major players in the new food economy.

What This Looks Like on the Ground

The combined effect of all these corporate pledges is going to dramatically change the look and feel of the American grocery store between now and the end of 2027. Some specific things to watch for:

• Familiar products with subtly different colors — deeper, more muted tones across the board.
• “New Recipe” or “No Artificial Colors” callouts on packaging. —
• Some products quietly disappearing or being reformulated under different brand names. —
• A small number of products that just don’t taste or look quite the same, especially in bright candies and snack foods where dye removal is most challenging. —
• Higher prices on some products, as natural colors cost more than synthetic dyes. —

Be the Consumer They’re Reformulating For — with RTNFP

All of this corporate change is happening because consumers like you started paying attention. Keep paying attention. Rock The New Food Pyramid is here to help — with the brand-tracking, label-decoding, real-food guidance you need to make every grocery trip count. Thanks for being part of the reason the food industry is finally doing the right thing.

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