Actual death from RNG.
 

Level 26 human ranger, 15 INT, wearing an Amulet of Slow Digestion, can cast Satisfy Hunger with ~30% fail rate, dies of starvation on DL21.

Reason? Failed to get the spell off at least five times in a row.

.3^5=0.00243 or 0.243%.

That sucks mate. Will make for a fine story in a year or so.

Moral: Satisfy Hunger is worthless for a midlevel Ranger or Rogue. Note that .243% is a fairly high failure probability in Angband. As a routine risk level, it is pretty much guaranteed to get you killed over the course of the game. (It is acceptable for killing valuable uniques, and other strategic risks.)

In any case, I don't like to use high mana, high-fail spells. It's safer to carry food and Scrolls of Identify, rather than wait around regenerating mana while awake monsters are created.

Nah, thats a more than acceptable fail rate for the spell. You just started casting far, far too late.