Started after Hearth and Home, so I really can't vouch for this, but, yes, they did indeed change the food system. I have no issues with it and get along fine. You might just want to give it a try.

I recommend starting a new world and character just in case. If you decide to use your old world, I would recommend running the "optterrain" command from the console the first time you're in the middle of your build sites. This fixes some crashing and low fps issues in heavily modified terrain areas.

It is further highly recommended to completely uninstall the game and reinstall from scratch if you haven't played in a while. There seems to be a problem with games that just got updated and not being freshly installed.

Happy building and hunting!