knitr kable: Text color in PDF from RNW is grey

Question

When I create a table using the knitr::kable function within a RNW file, the text color of the table items in the PDF appears to be grey.

I would like to change this to black. How can I do this?

Answer 1

\documentclass{article}
\begin{document}
<<>>=
  knitr::kable(cars[1:10,]) # grey
@

<<results="asis">>=
  knitr::kable(cars[1:10,]) # black
@
\end{document}

By default, the output of kable will be wrapped in a knitrout environment where the text color (fgcolor) is set to grey (rgb: 0.345, 0.345, 0.345). This is what happens in the first chunk.

With results="asis", the output is not wrapped in any enclosing environment, leaving the text color unchanged (black).