You're lucky. I bought the game 3 days ago and I still can't play it. They gave me an obvious non-fix so they could go home on Friday and they don't work on weekends it seems. Maybe today they will address my issue.
Materials are a lot more important than food. One above poster said it would be OK to go with just 3 food, but I would go even farther and say that it is OK to go with even 2 food. Having 4 materials is a lot better than 3. It means you can build things 4/3 = 133% of regular speed right from turn 1. Further, that means you can build buildings that increase your production faster (Lumber Mill, etc). Bringing those online faster brings everything else online fast