In virtual villagers 2 if you are running low on food and there is no way out and you can make stews or can upgrade to make stews you can make your villagers live on about 30 food until you get out.
First you must get at least thirty food. Then, you create a stew made of Purple Flower, Purple Flower and Orange Flower (This is a stew to completly restores all villagers that eat it). Through my research I found that if you have 0 food your villagers health will decrease until death. One way to get by that is to create stews that completely resore your villagers.

(Anybody who sees an error please notify me or edit it.)

Thank you

0.0 good idea. I just work like mad to get level 2 tech, and then make them build the dam as fast as I can...

Also, if your game is on 1/2 time, your villagers eat less.

YUP ... they eat less FREQUENTLY ... and still farm and each fish, coconut, and plant picked counts as one unit of food. And don't forget the resource of kids picking mushrooms.... at one point early in the game, I think that's what saved my villagers.

I ALWAYS have it set on 1/2 ... just remember they don't work any faster on normal or 2X, and also, remember it also takes longer to have babies, and longer for the crops to grow. On the upside, the fire lasts 39 hours instead of 19 on normal.

The amount of food gathered and work done by the villagers in VV2 is adjusted by the game to be proportional to the game speed when the game is running (as well as when it's off). That wasn't the case in VV1, where there was an advantage to leaving the game running, but set at 1/2 speed.

Mushrooms, however, are not affected by the difference in food values mentioned by Barbara.

At half speed, the six food points for a mushroom (and especially the 35 for a red one) become proportionately more valuable when only five is gained by a fish being caught, for example. By keeping a sharp eye open for mushrooms I've been able to keep the villagers going on mushrooms alone through periods of famine, sometimes even building up food stocks.

That is true, arnie. I was primarily addressing the practice of letting the game run on 1/2 speed, without player intervention, as a means of boosting villager productivity while reducing food consumption. That worked in Village Sim and VV1; it does not work in VV2.