Its caterpillars feed on dry plantstuffs such as seeds, including cereals (e.g. rice).

Other recorded[1] foods are flour and dried fruits.

Other scientific names, now invalid, for the rice moth are:[2] When describing his T. theobromae in 1913, Dyar established the genus Tineopsis.

He overlooked, however, that this had already been proposed by Cajetan Freiherr von Felder for a (presumed) arctiid moth in 1861.

Nonwithstanding that Felder's species is somewhat dubious and has not been identified in recent lists, Dyar's Tineopsis is a junior homonym and thus invalid in any case.