A particular benefit of having starved myself as a student through poverty is that I can easily go without one meal in any day. In fact I rarely eat three meals and can easily skip two. This makes travel a lot easier. I married into a family whcih cannot live with out three full meals a day and travelling with them is a pain.
I think both sides make sense. This is probably a bad decision for AA long term, but cutting out some meals will not cause pax to starve.
BTW I suspect there are Health and Safety rules requiring that airplanes have a certain number of toilets. I doubt there are any such rules for food provision. Comparing the two shows a certain lack of perspective IMO.