It is possible that they just disposed it because it containing food ingredients which aren't allowed to be imported in certain countries. Some countries simply don't allow you to import meat or dairy products or whatnot else.

On the other hand, yes, could've been the simplest explanation: someone was hungry and abused the situation to their advantage.


Back to topic: I probably wouldn't try too fancy hiding like color coding or such.

Using a pocket translation dictionary and unsuspiciously marking the recovery words shouldn't be much noticable. Take redundancy into account! Your luggage can get lost, so have a redundant copy in your hand luggage, too.

When you use a strong optional mnemonic passphrase to protect your real wallet, you don't need to worry too much about having your mnemonic recovery words in more or less plain sight.

Just make an assessment of the worst possible issues or loss situations that can arrise and think about proper mitigation.

You can also have thirty or more microSD cards, all of decent size and with encrypted files on them (decent sizes to make a copy attempt noticable due to time consumption needed). Only two or so (redundantly!) have encrypted volumes with what's valuable for you. The decryption key may be only strong enough for the period of your journey. You have it well and unsuspiciously hidden in multiple places in your various luggages, you have it also in your brain.

Don't overcomplicate things or you shoot yourself in the foot.