Let's make food be worth as much as cash or something. The only thing it does is boost your networth insanely, which gets annoying. All I have to do to rise up is attack for food a few times and I'm at the top, and someone does it to me and I'm right back at the bottom.
In an actual game, food NW is actually minimal. As you said, someone attacks you for it. Well, that's the point. You can't really keep food because there's one of two ways of getting at it and defending against both is spreading yourself thin.
But in this test round... well, that's why I massed troops last night.