That’s what it said. However, the fact is (according to the story), there was plenty of food. The food was concentrated in a few hands, rather than available to all.
It’s true, as a simple matter of economics, that one way to allocate food resources is for the man who controls them to use them to buy other people, but it’s difficult to consider that a religious ideal.
Again, it would seem that the rules say he cannot just pass out that temple food willy-nilly, but only to certain people, as it is a tithe.