Anorexic Tropicans?

[bonobo62]

This has happened to me a few times, and I'm getting a little confused. Ricardo decides to shoot his mouth off and tells me, "Presidente! Your people starve! Make more food! Quickly!" but when I check my food quality, I'm making twice as many meals as are being eaten. What's going on here? Am I overlooking something? Am I not building enough marketplaces, causing people to die from hunger on the long walk to the closest farm, or are they doing it deliberately? (I know I'd get pretty dadgumed sick of corn for every meal)

[MadamPresident]

You've hit it bonobob. You have to get the food TO the people before they starve!

This also happens if you have a ranch and some of the cows can't have enough food, or there is an orphan stuck somewhere without food.

To check if your people are really starving go into Info mode and click the thumbs up sign. Then click on food(its already selected)> You should see green arrows above all your people. If some are yellow or red, they aren't getting food.

Anotehr way is to check your almanac. Under happiness, food quality, if you click it, it will show you 'meals skipped'. I f this is more than 0.1 then you need more marketplaces/food sources!

Hope that helps.

[Jythier]

Ah, finally, now I know how to check what's REALLY going on in Tropico... are they starving, aren't they starving?  
It's fun, when you're bored or out of money, just to watch one person and see what they do... it can tell you a lot about how badly you layed out your towns... like, if it takes someone a year to get to the hospital, and then another year to get to the church, you've messed up a bit...
Also, Tropicans can eat anywhere, but only if they have household meals left, I think.  I've never seen one scavenge for food, though.
I'd rather go anorexic than scavenge...
Maybe the banker could live longer than the Showgirl without food?  That'd be a bit realistic.

[Alphidius]

Build marketplaces, especially near heavy population centers. I usually use a guild of the population 100 for one marketplace and the next hundred for another. Works well for me, hope this helps.