Because as Dave said a few pages back, once you start to starve, your people eat money. Or, more precisely, your government will magically buy food from nowhere at great cost to your Quatloos. Therefore, the more Quatloos you have, the more food you can buy and the less people have to eat each other.
Obviously, the best way to solve starvation is the nip it in the bud before it happens by building Mind Control. But unfortunately a lot of us, including Kai, aren't in that position any more.
Kai, if you do start needing food for your home planet, you may as well make use of my food providing planet. Once it reaches max capacity it'll be producing 18 million food a turn (it already produces 1 million a turn), it's fairly obviously labelled so you should be able to find it 
Funnily enough, with taxes on 20 my money is increasing and there hasn't been mass die-offs. I must be magical.
