What do these additions to common spice mixes do with your dish?

Question

Where I live, supermarkets sell all sorts of "spice mixes" for specific dishes, like "taco mix" or "spaghetti mix". I used to buy these, but then at some point started experimenting myself and stopped buying them.

Occasionally when I'm lazy, I still use these mixes to prepare food. But on reading the packet ingredients, I notice that most of the spice mix seems to be made up of things that I normally never add to my food, but I don't taste much difference for it.

Why are these ingredients added to the mix, and what are the effects on the flavor, taste and/or texture of the dish?

The ingredients include:

A considerable amount of salt (at least 5 or 10 times what I would put in myself)
Dextrose or other forms of sugar
corn- or potatostarch

Willem van Rumpt · Accepted Answer · 2015-06-30T11:55:52.320

11

Salt:

Added as a preservative and taste maker. And usually indeed lots of it. Very broad and coarsely put, salty is usually perceived as tasty.

Corn / Potato starch:

Added as a thickening agent. They also thicken sauces while keeping them more translucent than regular flour does, although I'm not sure if that's the reason they use those starches over flour, but I think it might.

As GdD mentioned, starch is also added as an anti caking agent: It absorbs moist to prevent lumps from forming.

Dextrose / Sugar:

Not sure, but I would guess mostly for taste, and partly to balance out any acidic ingredients. Again, very broad, and very coarsely put, humans like sweet. Sugar equals tasty.

edited Jun 30 '15 at 11:55

answered Jun 30 '15 at 11:32

Willem van Rumpt

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Starch is also added as an anti-caking agent. – GdD Jun 30 '15 at 11:44
@GdD: Indeed, I'll update the answer to include it. – Willem van Rumpt Jun 30 '15 at 11:53
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Starch and dextrose are also added to get the volume of the spice package up to a point where consumers feel they're getting something for their money. Four cubic centimeters of spices in a package the size of a McDonald's ketchup packet will not sell for $1.69 or $2.49, or whatever they're getting for those mixes nowadays. – Wayfaring Stranger Jun 30 '15 at 13:09
@WayfaringStranger: LOL :) True probably. I will leave it out of the answer though, as I can't prove it. Maybe it's something for the people over at skeptics ;) – Willem van Rumpt Jun 30 '15 at 13:58

What do these additions to common spice mixes do with your dish?

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