Larian's way makes no sense to me. (At least it's not evil). Either encumbrance is a fun limitation for the player, or it's a game flaw that requires fixing. Creating both the limitation and the workaround seems wasteful.
Though it would improv QoL, not having to grab food from the chest doesn't really solve the core issue.
Yes, Larian has stuff like that. Another one which annoys me is when you loot container you can send any item there to any companion or stash, but it's just awkward to do. I think about something like loot UI from PoEs or shared inventory of Pathfinders and how more enjoyable those implementations are.
I don't know quite how to properly criticise this design - it feels somewhere between low polish and lacking QoL improvement or Larian adding bunch of mechanics without an idea how they want to tie those together. Really BG3 has a system similar to Pillars of Eternity with limited individual inventory for immediate use an always accessibly unlimited stash, but it's just clumsily implemented.
What i say is it seems to me like "send to camp" was created so person who wish to stash something in camp forgets to do that can simply send it there, instead of slow and anoying travel back and forth.
Even if it was the case, which I doubt, that's hardly an excuse. If what you describe was their intention then it is just very poorly designed system. If one needs to add self imposed rules, on top of implemented rules to work as intended then the design needs to be reexamined.
I think the explanation is much simpler. Larian is building on D:OS2 design, which didn't have resting , food, and per encounter resources and simply didn't account for that stuff. maybe they will reexamine the system before 1.0 maybe they won't.
