If it is edible and people are eating it in your presence, there is no reason for you to abstain if you are hungry and the food is offered to you to eat, especially if you have already asked for food to eat. The true monk is a mendicant, or beggar. As such, he cannot regulate his diet, but must eat whatever food is available to him when he is hungry. All fear of death is only a remembrance of the horrors of birth. Death is a release from the restrictions of the body.
Death is easy.
Being reborn is the hard part. All our nightmares stem from the trauma of both. Not the pains our mothers felt, but the terrible pressures and pains we felt ourselves. The very worst thing that can happen is to be born. There is no separate self existing anywhere.