Where this was said
Food: The M&M as America's Greatest Candy Story
At 35:39 · chapter starts 27:05
Kim Severson promises to tell the story of 20th-century America through a single candy, and she delivers. The M&M begins with Forrest Mars, estranged son of the Milky Way inventor, who spots British volunteers in the Spanish Civil War eating heat-resistant chocolate balls. Back in the U.S., lacking raw materials, he partners with Bruce Murrie, a Hershey heir — the first two nepo babies in American candy history — and creates the M&M in 1941. The U.S. Army is the first customer; returning soldiers create a national market. In 1954, the peanut M&M arrives, requiring a custom peanut variety that Mars eventually engineers with the University of Georgia. Decades later, the brown mascot M&M's stiletto heels become a flashpoint in the culture wars, and then the purple M&M's inclusivity message deepens the controversy further. Severson closes with M&M's current struggle to remove artificial dyes under MAHA pressure — and lands her thesis: the story of American food is the story of innovation, money, and an insatiable need for sweetness.
Two nepo babies from rival candy empires create the M&M in 1941. The U.S. Army becomes their first client. Soldiers come home as loyal customers. A custom peanut variety is engineered at a Georgia university. Then the spokes-candies get flat shoes and trigger a national culture war. Kim Severson's M&M story is the story of America.
