I often make stockpiles where i don't want barrels or bins so I can get a visual read on how much of the item I have. For instance, I usually have a prepared food stockpile near my kitchen that all other prepared food stockpiles take from. If it doesn't allow barrels, I can tell at a glance if I need to make more prepared meals or not. if it allows barrels, I have no idea how many prepared meals I have without checking the stocks screen. If it has no meals, then one or more of the piles that take from it is probably not full. If it just has a few roasts, then My other piles are still full, but I should make some more. If it's fairly full, I'm just fine.
But of course, stockpiles default to the maximum number of barrels/bins, so I often end up forgetting to zero it out until some eager dwarf puts a barrel in there and it gets a bunch of roasts put in it. I've found that just setting barrels to zero at this point doesn't work well to get it cleared out. Dwarfs just don't seem very motivated to remove stuff from barrels/bins, just because you have more of them than the stockpile is set to take. I'm not sure if they won't do it at all, or if it's just a really low priority, I've never had the patience to wait long enough to see it happen. I just use the dump method, which is fairly quick.
But you do have to keep an eye on it, especially with food, or they'll start rotting in the garbage dump. I know that food rots faster in refuse stockpiles, and I suspect it also does so in garbage dump zones. But I'm not 100% sure of it.