This should be achievable by relatively simple modding. What I usually do is make way more quality meals than simple meals, and place them last in the jobs list. So only when the chef runs out of ingredients, will he start making simple meals. They can't eat what's not there.
I'm not talking about meals.
I'm not sure how easy it would be to mod all the implications - after writing that post I realized that one reason why it's not in vanilla yet might be because of the distinct Food / Drug Binge mental break types : you wouldn't want a Pawn on a Drug Binge to try to do it with chocolate ! (I hope the opposite isn't true for Beer / Ambrosia ?)
I did request Dubs to add it to their Mint Menus mod, but IMHO this should really be part of vanilla.