Having not seen the existing scripts I cant be 100% but I think the food ration scripts should be very small, your simply taking an item with an on activation function (the meat) and using it with the campfire item, which creates item 'food ration' in the PC's inventory, then destroy item 'meat'. There should be something in the script to ensure the campfire is 'lit', which should be a single line maybe? As far as I can tell that should be it. So that's what, 4 or 5 lines?
Putting in extra components makes it something like "Use item X on cooking pot to fire the script (like the boilers hook fires the leather boiling crafting) check item X, Y, and Z are located in object A (object A being a cooking pot, X Y and Z are meat, carbs, water) if yes create X animation, create item 'Food Ration' in PC's inventory, destroy items X Y and Z in cooking pot. Then you just use the existing script in place for eating a food ration. So it's actually using existing scripts and adding in something else to get the end result.
The most effort would be putting in carbs and water but we have towns with bakery's and warehouses, and farm lands/barns/fields (so players can steal them if they want too, good for outlaw bandit roleplay), as well as inns and taverns so you just need to put them in stores and items with inventory's, so everything is in place to place them already. Don't we have water sources for the canteens and the Akiri desert? I'm not sure I haven't gone there, but a few choice rivers and wells are easily identified as water sources throughout the module, water purchased in stores can make up for short falls in water sources very easily. Slowly add in ways to forage for carbs (maybe even grow them in the future, granes, maiz, potatoes, turnips?) so players aren't forced to purchase everything, or if there character roleplay concepts or OCR prevent purchasing from stores, but purchasing is the easiest way of keeping well fed which is only right. If your going to hunt and forage for food then your always going to have take a few extra steps to do it but that is part of the fun of playing your hermit/one with nature/bandit-outlaw concept.
I think that's what I'm most disappointed by the current system, surviving in the wild is almost no extra effort than purchasing food. You kill a few effortless creatures and collect stacks and stacks of food rations instantly, you can easily find 20 or 30 stacked in your inventory on a leisurely strole through a few areas, and it's just isn't fun that way.