Your villagers are quite hardy. Even when the food level drops to zero it will take a while for them to take starvation damage. As others have said, set your kids to mushroom-hunting. If you find a red mushroom or manage to get a small store of food in the bin and the villagers have taken starvation damage, make a rainbow stew to restore them. You should get past the lack of food without too much trouble apart from time spent looking for mushrooms. Don't ignore the collectibles; duplicates are worth tech points, which cut the time taken to reach L3 Farming and future self-sufficiency in food.