To date, I have played VV1, VV2, and am currently playing VV3, and have only had one villager (in VV1) die from starvation.

For VV3, I used the following strategy at the beginning of the game -

Start the fire.
Plant the fallen fruit.
Get honey from the bee hive. I had only one villager doing this, but I did slightly train another one just in case.
I only had 8 villagers, 2 were kids & one was a nursing mom, which left me with 4 working adults. With one assigned to farming, one or two on building (to adept level), and the other one or two on research. Cross-trained my villagers to at least adept level while keeping everyone possible on research.

It's not necessary to have several hundred food points to survive; villagers can get by on much less, so every time my food got over 150 or so, I made my farmer research too.

Don't know about anyone else but all MY villagers have ADHD. Had to constantly keep putting them back to what they were supposed to be doing.

Got the 7000 tech points to restore the lift first. Then kept two villagers (possibly three if mom is finished nursing) researching while new trees grow. Hunted for mushrooms a lot. Easiest way is to pick up a kid FIRST, then cruise around & look. Find a collectible or mushroom, drop kid #1 on it, grab another kid & keep going.

I had practically everyone trained to Elder level before choosing a chief. I hardly ever pause the game before leaving, but I do change the speed to slow. That way, the fire stays lit, and the scientists hopefully keep researching (instead of taking a bath, watching the fish, or something else equally as useful).

Hope this was helpful.