Kitchen Towel Coloring

After wondering why so many kitchen towels have a stripe of red on them, I was unwilling to use "Style" as the easy answer. After all, this use of color prevents the towels from being easily bleached if they're stained, and doesn't explain the ubiquity of the coloration.

Rather, coloring a part of the towel shows dirtiness not often present outside the kitchen: white powders. Salt, flour, sugar, and various other commonplace baking ingredients would be difficult to see on a pure white towel, but are easily apparent if there's a streak of color on the towel.