A number of thoughts occur to me. 1)The food was produced locally at Akhetaten. If it was perhaps there might not have been enough to go around. The laborers suffered. 2) This was a cult of personality as much as a religious reformation. Therefore Akhenaten could have starved his people the way Kim Il Jong and Stalin starved their people and kept the best for the upper crust. 3) Akhenaten didn't give a damn about his laborers he was no more emotionally tied to them than a farmer is to their beasts of burden, you work them to death and then shoot them. The workers were just so many mules to Akhenaten. 4) It was simple economics it was cheaper to work them to death and bring up a new supply of workers than it was to feed them. They were utterly disposable.The same thing happened with the workers at the great wall of China. And most likely 5) Some combination of 1-4 mixed with something we never thought about.