General :: Adjusting $PATH In /etc/profile Does Not Affect Root

I added a directory to the $PATH variable in /etc/profile. This works for my user account but not for root. It's easy to add it to my /root/.bashrc but I would like to understand whats's wrong. It's a widely unmodified Debian 6 so I think my changes should do the trick.

Here is what my /etc/profile looks like:

# /etc/profile: system-wide .profile file for the Bourne shell (sh(1))
# and Bourne compatible shells (bash(1), ksh(1), ash(1), ...).
if [ "`id -u`" -eq 0 ]; then

[code]....

Edit: The path I added is the distcc-stuff. Here is what echo $PATH tells me:

$ echo $PATH
/usr/lib/distcc/bin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/local/games:/usr/games
# echo $PATH
/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin