“Cravings for rice, a Japanese dietary staple, have been reported for Japanese people. Deprivation of a craved food is known to increase the desire for it, but the effects of deprivation of rice have yet to be explored.“
Until now, that is … for investigators Sakura Komatsu,Yasushi Kyutoku, Ippeita Danc, and Kenjiro Aoyama at Doshisha University and Chuo University, in Japan, have performed a set of experiments which:
“[…] provides the first experimental evidence that cravings for a staple food are enhanced by its deprivation.”
See: ‘Rice deprivation affects rice cravings in Japanese people’ in Food Quality and Preference, Volume 46, December 2015, Pages 9–16