It's all a matter of use case. If you want to just make something work today on today's Arduino, why not? I did that a few times. I wouldn't use it for anything that I would publish or push forward into other projects...
I'm pretty sure that bit shifting is optimized by the compiler. Especially, a shift by 8 bits. That would translate into a fairly efficient series of byte moves for the case that is presented here.
Again, horse so dead, the flies are buzzing. Should have left it alone...