Does one out of every hundred peanuts produced end up in Peanut M&Ms?

Question

This morning at 8:30 AM on the Power 96.1 radio station in Atlanta, Georgia, I heard a radio ad for M&M in which it was claimed that one out of every one hundred (1/100) peanuts ends up in Peanut M&Ms.

Is there any data behind this assertion or was it just made up for marketing?

Here's an article on PR Newswire which also mentions the statement touted by Mars:

in fact only 1 in 100 peanuts is lucky enough to find its way into a bag of M&M'S Peanut

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_{I tagged this with the nutrition tag because "food" is a synonym.}

Answer 1

The preliminary projection for world peanut production in 2012/2013 is 39.93 million metric tons. In 2006, it was 32.30 million metric tons. That is in-shell weight.

The global shelling percentage (how much peanut is left after shelling, by mass) is about 70% (El Bassam. Handbook of Bioenergy Crops: A Complete Reference to Species, Development and Applications. 2010. At p. 200).

That results in about 28 million metric tons of shelled peanut in 2013, or 23 million metric tons of shelled peanut in 2006.

For 1/100 of that to find its way into Peanut M&Ms would mean that at least 0.28 million metric tons of peanuts are used in Peanut M&Ms per year (or 0.23 million metric tons at 2006 levels of production).

The average mass of a Peanut M&M is 2.59 grams (with a standard error of 0.03 grams). (The average mass of Peanut M&Ms is an upper bound on the average mass of peanut in them. There are other ingredients.)

0.23 million metric tons (the 2006 number) of 2.59 gram units is 88,803,088,803 units. At least 88 billion Peanut M&Ms would be needed to be produced. (For 2013, the requisite number is 108 billion Peanut M&Ms.)

There are about 146 billion M&M candies produced per year. (Sutton and Klein. Enterprise Marketing Management: The New Science of Marketing. 2006. At p. 139). This estimate is still current. I confirmed this by a phone call to Mars. They said:

We make about 400 million M&M pieces every day; that's for all types.

Basically the question comes down to whether it's plausible (or even better, whether there's evidence) that at least 60% (for 2006) or at least 74% (for 2013) of M&Ms are peanut M&Ms.

Answer 2

The "1/100" claim appears to have originated directly from this press release from Mars, the manufacturer of M&Ms, which itself directly quotes Roy Benin, Chief Consumer Officer of Mars Chocolate North America:

“This event perfectly captured our passion for peanuts – in fact only 1 in 100 peanuts is lucky enough to find its way into a bag of M&M’S Peanut.”

This claim appears to be the cornerstone of an ongoing marketing campaign for M&M. The exact wording used in that press release, though, is a bit ambiguous. It could very well mean that only 1 in 100 of the peanuts delivered to Mars makes it into an M&M.

Articuno's answer provides a thorough analysis of the numbers, which I see no need to reproduce. With that said I disagree with the conclusion that the numbers are insufficient to conclude that the 1/100 claim is plausible, because, like most agricultural products, worldwide peanut production varies quite dramatically year over year. For example, the USDA reported almost a 13% increase in peanut production in the US from 2009 to 2010. The data to which Articuno linked predicted over a 5% increase in worldwide production in 2012/2013. Global peanut production in 2006—the year from which the M&M candy production statistic was reported—was 32.303 million metric tons, which is about 20% lower than the cited projections for 2013.

Using the new numbers for 2006, the requisite number of peanut M&Ms produced would be about 124.7 billion units, which is below the total number of M&M sales reported in that year. Therefore, there is a chance that the interpretation that "1/100" means "one out of every hundred peanuts produced in the world" could potentially be plausible, but it is impossible to evaluate the statement's validity because its original wording is ambiguous.

Answer 3

"It's about time we remind the world how irresistible M&M's Peanut really is," Seth Klugherz, senior director of M&M's Chocolate Candies, said in a statement. "Each M&M's Peanut is literally 1 in 100 — meaning we have to sort through 100 different peanuts, just to find one that's lucky enough to make its way into a bag of M&M's Peanut."

^{http://www.mars.com/france/fr/press-center/press-list/news-releases.aspx?SiteId=94&Id=5446}

so, NOT 1% of all peanuts in the world... but that raises a new question of what happens to the 99% of peanuts they don't use? and why are they so bad/what's wrong with all those peanuts?