Peanut M&M’s are on average around 80-85% chocolate by weight. (Their peanuts are surprisingly small)
It takes about 3 standard M&M’s (at 0.7g each) to make up the weight of chocolate in a single peanut M&M
Based on Australian prices for M&M’s, it is cheaper by 11c per 100g to eat 3 standard M&M’s and add a peanut to each mouthfull, thereby creating the equivalent peanut-to-chocolate ratio of a peanut M&M.
I based this on brand-name peanuts which were quite expensive. Savings may vary depending on the cost of ingredients.
All measurements are based on Australian M&M’s. Weights and ratios may differ from country to country.
WARNING: The mix of standard M&M’s with handfuls of peanuts does not give the same satisfaction in “crunch” you get when chewing peanut M&M’s. The outer shell of peanut M&M’s is thicker. Your savings therefore may be offset by a lower level of satisfaction in texture. Individuals should consider their priorities.
I know this because I am lonely and had access to a digital scale, M&M’s and too many beers last night.
Also: salt. I get the impression that peanuts incorporated into candy are usually roasted, but unsalted (or at least salted less than bagged roast peanuts), however, at the same time, salty peanuts and sweet chocolate sounds like it could be a nicer combination. What’s the test data on that looking like?
Someday when I have more money and time I’m going to set up a small lab and do tests like this. I want independent verification of nutrition information and what the typical amounts are vs “ideal.” Mostly for fast food because when I get something like super salty fries somewhere or super greasy fries I just shake my head thinking “this can’t possibly be prepared properly based on the recipes from the chefs in the product development area.” So I think I’ll get some high quality blenders and calorimeters, probably some small centrifuges, and lots and lots of incubation ovens with agar petri dishes. Then I’ll take some samples from each fast food place near me and test them. Swab the packaging, weigh the foods, blend the samples, centrifuge them, titrate for salt content and other minerals, etc. It’ll be fun to see which fast food places come close to their published nutrition information and which ones are blowing smoke up our asses. My bet is the people in the field who actually prepare the recipes don’t come close to the perfectly executed works from the restaurant’s test kitchens. That’s leaving aside the question of food storage and hygiene for the individual restaurant. Do they leave their fry containers laying around in a dusty storage room before using them? Do they clean and filter the fry oil regularly?
I’ve been interested in stuff like this since I worked at a McDonald’s in college. There was one poor bastard who was responsible for maintenance and he was always underfoot trying to do things like filter the fryer oil and top it off with fresh oil. Half of the procedures he was talking about(keeping the oil at a certain level so it didn’t damage the temperature probes, the right amount of salt for a batch of fries and how to stir them after shaking the salt, etc.) I had never heard from anyone else. I’m betting these were not isolated incidents. I’m just curious about how much impact these have on the final product versus the ideal as represented by the nutrition information.
Then I could roll this up and publish it online, maybe with some videos on how to do this yourself with some easily available stuff. They sell simple bomb calorimeters at Wal-Mart and high quality food scales are readily available as well. Centrifuges are a little harder to come by, as are good titration setups, but it’s still doable at the kitchen table for reasonably accurate results.
Back in the day, this is why I liked Consumer Reports magazine. They’d buy frozen foods or get to-go food and do critical analysis of it. They had some really good articles on how much rat hair they found in frozen chicken pot-pies, the number of beetles in flour, and how most cottage cheese is spoiled by the time you buy it. It was really useful knowing that Cheerios is no more nutritious and a lot more expensive than eating Purina rat chow (or was it monkey chow?). Now their reporting seems much lighter-weight and focused on the nutrition labels, price, and taste.
I’ve been meaning to ask this question. Didn’t Peanut M&Ms used to be a whole peanut covered in chocolate? The TV ads certainly suggested that and I think I remember. But I’ve learned to really question live witness accounts, especially my own. Just to stick to the OP, that would change the cost comparison a lot. Or would it?
What do you mean by a whole peanut? In the shell? In my experience it’s still an ordinary whole peanut “pea” covered in chocolate, but as the OP says, they use rather small peanuts.
It’s just little gravelly chunks/bits now. Yeah, not a peanut in a shell, but a whole, nice, shelled peanut covered in chocolate. Commercial in question.
