“A famine and much suffering” would be a Jewish way of saying a famine … (which) caused much suffering, and so the Good News Translation has translated it in this way (see Jerusalem Bible, New English Bible, Phillips; and also An American Translation* and Moffatt). The word translated food appears only here in the New Testament; in the Septuagint and the papyri it refers specifically to food for domesticated animals, but the meaning in this context seems to be food in general.

An expression for famine is usually readily available, but in some areas it is translated as “the people had no food.”

A rendering of could not find any food should not be translated to imply that they were hunters and gatherers; rather, they “could not obtain any food” in the sense that there was no food even to be bought.

Quoted with permission from Newman, Barclay M. and Nida, Eugene A. A Handbook on The Acts of the Apostles. (UBS Handbook Series). New York: UBS, 1972. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .