Survival mods are a mixed bag, ngl. You're not overthinking it - the problem is real. Food everywhere does trivialize things, but so does going full survival and suddenly you're eating 40 raw meat per dungeon crawl.
The actual solution is to pair a survival mod with something that rebalances enemy loot. Vanilla leveled lists are broken - bandits drop way too much food and potions. If you use a survival mod alone without touching that, yeah, dungeons become pointless because you're swimming in supplies. But if you grab something that adjusts what enemies actually carry - fewer healing potions, less food on corpses - suddenly you actually have to think about resource management instead of just... looting the 15th wheel of cheese.
Also depends which mod you pick. Some survival mods have settings you can tweak. I'd rather dial down how much food I need to eat per day than use a mod that doesn't let me configure it at all. And if you're worried about inventory bloat, just don't carry everything. Leave the wheels of cheese behind. Sounds dumb but it actually works - forces you to prioritize.
That said, if you just want exploration to feel less like fast-travel bingo, you don't necessarily need full survival. A mod that just makes fast travel cost something - stamina, time, immersion - can scratch that itch without the inventory management headache. Depends what actually bothers you about vanilla.
