I’ve made butter, and it was approximately the same shade of yellow as unsalted butter I bought in the shop. It’s a pale yellow, but definitely yellow.
I think it’s white - which would make it a fairly good candidate for the thing the OP is asking after.
The normal colour of commercial butter varies from season to season, so they end up adding food colouring much of the time. (At least here in Québec.)
The cheese spread known as Kraft Cheez Whiz (we’ve had it in stores for decades in Canada, I’m pretty sure it’s sold in the U.S. also) would be grayish if it weren’t for the pale-orange colouring. When you rinse out an empty container, the goo reverts to its, uh, natural tint.
Butter varies in color depending on the diet of the cows. The more vitamin A milk or the products derived from it contains, the yellower it is. It can be yellower than margerine naturally. Most US butter is nearly white because the cows don’t eat a nutritious diet…
I do, in fact, have a jar of perfectly Swedish strawberry jam right in front of me (of the “Den gamle fabrik”-brand). I assure you it’s a very healthy scarlet red.
Are you sure you might not be colour blind? Because this is pretty much what I’d call red: http://www.bob.se/Vaara-produkter/Sylt-mos/Jordgubbssylt
Butter and cheese from grain feed cows is white and has colour added to it (which is why cheese is that odd orange in the US).
Grass feed cows make naturally yellow butter and cheese.
I think real wasabi paste is pale green, but you almost never get real wasabi (especially in the US). What you get is horseradish dyed pale-to-unnaturally-bright green. So it’s kind of halfway to the OP.
According to wikipedia, tumeric is used in some chicken broths to give a yellowish tint.
I assume the OP isn’t interested in all the various obviously-industrially-produced items like power bars, pop rocks, pills, sodas, and hot dogs, all of which contain loads of different kinds of food colorings.
Though, come to think of it, sausage and cured meats might be something that one wouldn’t expect food coloring in, but I’m sure many do have some various colorings (traditional or not). For instance, Spanish sobrassada is a traditional sausage that contains enough paprika to change the color, and on the other end, many hot dogs have some red food coloring.
Apparently oranges are actually green.
That just ain’t right.
That’s incorrect.
Oranges are in fact, orange. I grow several varieties, and can show you a picture.
However, depending on conditions, ripe Oranges can undergo “regreening,” and then the big producers feel the need to dye them to meet customer expectations.
That’d be a harsh way to find out…
Fresh ginger is white, but pickled ginger is a pale pink because ginger contains anthocyanin which reacts with the acid and turns pink. Although most pickled ginger sold in stores do contain added coloring.
It’s pale green.
To the OP, you may have been thinking of ketchup. Not so long ago, Heinz released a horribly ill-fated green ketchup “for Kids.” This would indicate pretty strongly that Heinz ketchup is processed to the point of colorlessness, and then redyed red. If their ketchup was “naturally” red, then adding that green dye would have rendered the result brownish.
Hmm, I see. I shall have to re-read my source and see if they clarified that point.
Well, you’re just picking them before they’re ripe!
You can produce almost any desired color by adding an appropriate color dye to the product. It doesn’t have to start out white or colorless.
Heinz also produced a ‘purple’ ketchup (Mn Vikings football team color) that was in stores around here for a while. But not for long – like the green ketchup, it didn’t sell well.
What color is Coca Cola and Pepsi without the added “caramel” coloring?
Here’s a link to the ingredient label of just about Heinz ketchup products.
http://www.heinzketchup.com/Products.aspx
No food coloring listed in any of them. (The funky colored kids ones not on the list)
According to last week’s SGU, ketchup is naturally brown, and cola (i.e. the flavor of normal Coke and normal Pepsi) is naturally clear/colorless. So Crystal Pepsi was just normal Pepsi without without the normally added coloring.
Imitation maple syrup, like Mrs. Buttersworth, is really just HFCS plus some maple flavoring. HFCS is practically clear.
Not quite correct – the natural color of margarine varies depending on what vegetable product it’s made from.
Here in the Midwest, the most common margarine was made from corn, which is yellow, and so it came out a yellow color.
The dairy industry in Minnesota got a law passed requiring margarine to be sold in a white color, with the yellow coloring in a separate packet. So if it was margarine from corn, the producers had to change the yellow color to white, than the consumer had to change the color back to yellow*!
(*Or not bother. My mother often didn’t bother, with the margarine she was going to use in baking or cooking. Sometimes we were rushed getting breakfast before school, and had only white margarine available. Even though it tasted the same, you sometimes had to convince yourself of that – we are so accustomed to taking clues to taste from the appearance of foods.)
