They are not going to starve if there is food. Period.

You can verify that by leaving them alone for a while and checking their health when you get back, it should be quite high (barring any illness).

The change we recently made, in fact, was a fix because they were stuffing themselves in game-off. Now, they will eat normal amounts while they are unsupervised, and the food will last longer so they can survive much longer unattended.