Yes, it is little odd, but from my experience, if you keep doing that, your relationship with said village is going to deteriorate. It's possible to do it without anyone seeing that and dropping half eaten food. Not sure if in that case villagers are going to notice it later.
This got me an idea to try similar thing with bags of grain. But if I pour some grain into my container, container gets marked as unpaid even if I return the grain to the original bag. Changing that so you only have to pay for the grain you've taken could help starting farmers who need some seeds, but can't afford full bag of grain.