What is the difference between white and pink ginger? Some sushi places serve white ginger flakes with their food, while others serve pink colored ginger. There doesn't seem to be any detectable taste difference that I've found. So, what is the difference between the two other than just color, and, why serve one over the other?
Although white ginger and red (or pink) ginger do exist, the different colors in sushi ginger are from a dye. The color in white sushi ginger comes from the pickling process and the red/pink color in ink sushi ginger comes from an artificial dye (usually E124 -cochineal red- or in other brands beet extract). The generic name for sushi ginger is gari and here's the Wikipedia page.


White gari/sushi ginger on the left and pink gari/sushi ginger on the right.