@sneezemonkey Pff. The assumptions.
The rice topic in this chapter is all kinds of wrong.
First. Rice is used as a feed for birds. If they were using it for animal feed, then that would mean they have poultry livestock specifically (cattle digests raw rice poorly and if they didn't know how to cook rice then birds is the only answer), and starving yourselves before eating the poultry is suicidal. Unlike cattle and the like, it is easier to raise poultry and it is better to kill them before winter as they are a drain for food and are easier to replenish.
Two. If you didn't use sticky rice, you add the salt as a broth. Most of the time, salt is used so that the rice holds together or for the nutrients. Never is salt added alone for the taste, you add it for the nutrients. There are far more common spices which would have been easier to procure and tastes better with rice(salt used to be expensive prior to industrialization)(You could add salt prior to cooking but that's more from the texture than from the taste).
Three. Feed quality rice tastes like it has lots of dirt. Tasted it multiple times. Can't remove the taste. Being starved doesn't change that.