Is nothing sacred? (part 14)

I confess that it is many years since I consumed a tube of Smarties. But that has not diminished my shock and indignation about the followng story, which I might have missed were it not for Zoe Williams of The Guardian (here):

"Blue Smarties are to become white, as Nestlé Rowntree desists in its use of all artificial colours. I have no particular fondness for the blue ones: any idiot knows only the orange ones taste different. If I have a beef at all, it's with the change of packaging. (The tube no longer has that poppy lid with a letter on it. This means my lifelong search for a Z ends unrealised. What a sodding waste of three decades.)
But anyway, there is no natural alternative to blue food colouring, though the green ones will continue to be tinted with, I don't know, courgette? Nestlé said this change was in line with its long-term goal to "improve the nutritional qualities of its products".

White smarties are what you get if you suck coloured ones until the colour comes off. The idea that you might find white smarties in the packet ab initio, as it were, is disgusting. Nestlé Rowntree should be ashamed of themselves.

And, as a footnote, do Smarties have any nutritional qualities?