I've run through the game several times, but haven't yet lost a tribe to starvation. The trick is not to expand your population - at all, until you have lots of food. Even then, expand your population only cautiously, while focusing on tech. You don't want to expand when you can't sustain their needs, you want the minimum sustainable population; for me, I find 5 is a good number to aim for; that usually expands to 7 or 8, if children of the needed gender aren't born right away.

Personally, I've played the game on fast, and having the game whisked through all the puzzles so quickly really demolishes the sense of accomplishment and reward. If this were SimCity, it would need a faster pace; but for casual gamers, I think the pace is good.