I tested removing [MEAT] from the Muscle definition. It still butchered fine, and showed up for Embark purchase, but it wasn't stockpiled in with food. When I forbid everything else, Dwarves eventually ate it, even though I removed [EDIBLE_RAW] and [EDIBLE_COOKED] from the material.
?!
Because it's an item type; it will always be edible.
Once I made DRINK:NONE:INORGANIC:NONE (which is magma), and it easily fits into wooden barrels without setting anything on fire. Dwarf came by, drank it. No problem.
Any DRINK and any MEAT is edible by default as far as I know.
edit: you can try removing or replacing this: [BUTCHER_SPECIAL:MEAT:NONE] with something more suitable.
Would using something instead of DRINK break the 'dwarves need alcohol' system?
How would you add in a specific inorganic for BUTCHER_SPECIAL? [BUTCHER_SPECIAL:INORGANIC:SAUSAGE]
The biggest issue I'm dealing with now is that food items don't show up for purchase in embark if they don't have [EDIBLE_RAW] or [EDIBLE_COOKED], which makes modding all plants into not having those tokens to force harder cooking reactions a bit trifling. I think having a fake underground plant that never appears in the wild with all of the end products as growths might resolve that, though it's kind of weird.
And then for the meat, they get broken when [EDIBLE_COOKED] and [EDIBLE_RAW] are removed but are still eaten anyway. A combination of the deterioration scripts and adding a syndrome to raw meat would let [EDIBLE_COOKED] remain, but that's not ideal. At least the meals will still get removed in time, I suppose.
The HEATDAM strategy is a little wonky because of how largely uncontrollable temperature is, from my knowledge of the game.
Given the current food tags and cooking system, I suppose either a script or file change that automatically disables cooking on the stocks-kitchen screen for all materials and leaving that part up to the honor system would make things least awkwardly fanangled and let players choose between soft and hard core that way.