One of the customs sheets that I has in the restricted column: foodstuffs in excess quantities. That seems a bit subjective to me. We were planning on brining out whole kitchen, but there are some things we'd like to take that we can't get there, namely spices and such, about 1 box of foodstuffs. I'm taking "excess quantities" to be "don't try to bring in 20kg anything". I've read about the restrictions on commodities like rice and flower. We wouldn't be bringing any of that stuff. It's just really hard to find good cajun roux base in Switzerland.

Does anyone have a more objective definition of what can be brought in? Does customs check that hard?

If this was for personal use, I doubt this would present any problems at all. Normally they are concerned that you might be bringing in more than 500g of meat (think of all those poor, starving Swiss farmers), but I doubt they'd make a problem about a box of spices.

Of course there also another possibility - you could try asking them?