Why do some ingredients on product labels explain their function (e.g., “to prevent caking”) while others do not?
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This is a legal question, not a chemistry question. I believe that food companies will but a label on an ingredient like “anti-caking agent” or “preserves flavor” as a way to calm down those who find unfamiliar scientific sounding words to be scary, and assume this means they are somehow bad for you.
It’s largely there to inform the customer to as not to frighten them about the type or function of additive in their food. Big scary chemicals added for no reason, well, they are less scary if you know they’re only purpose is to prevent clumps.
Additionally, in some cases, products which make claims about organic, natural, or other specious claims about the type and nature of their additives, may have to include that information as part of the ingredient list when the same chemical does or does t disqualify a product from being described a certain way based on its function. This is very rare though. It’s usually just to make the customer feel better.
They do not have to write the explanations for each ingredient, they just have to list them. But that can be confusing to some customers. They are given a long list of ingredients, some of which they do not know about and some do not sound like it should belong in that product. This might put them off buying it. So manufacturers chose to give a bit of explanation to some of the ingredients. The anti-caking agent often used is chalk. It does not sound like it belongs in food and people even know it under more scientific names. But it is harmless and it makes sense that it would prevent caking of the ingredients in some products. So by adding the explanation people go from thinking you are stuffing the food with chalk to make it cheaper to accepting that you use some to prevent caking.
If you’re talking about silicone dioxide, probably because its use as a food additive is regulated federally, and must only be used as an anti-caking agent where demonstrated effective, and less than 2%. I suspect labeling is reflecting its designated use to avoid confusion, but I’m not sure if it’s legally required to state.
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