You can satisfy most of your dwarfs without *that* much effort (especially if you use Patrik Lundell's script). The main trick is to ensure that you don't over produce foods (e.g. massive farms of plump helmets). Having shortages of some foods means that you get variety automatically. You can also potentially make several kitchens with different ingredients nearby to enforce some variety. Also, you *must* avoid using containers in your kitchen stockpiles (or else you end up with the same ingredient in each slot).
I can't agree, unfortunately, after examining my dwarves. Note that Patrik's script takes only full citizens into account. When I modified it to count every guy from the Citizen tab (i.e. both citizens and long-term residents), I've got these numbers:
All citizens and long-term residents: 358
Different Drinks: 101
Different Foods: 347
It's simply not possible to meet needs of most of my dwarves, even if I try to make only meals with drinks. The variability is too high, almost everyone needs something different, and the number of unobtainable drinks (not to mention foods) is higher than number of obtainable ones, by wide margin. It's rare than dwarves need more than three things, usually they need 1, 2 or 3 things.
Some examples of unobtainable drinks (or liquids, since honey or moghopper juice don't really count as alcohols) in my population:
whip vine (biome doesn't contain despite being savage, not obtainable otherwise, I've got a guy who likes only this, no other food or drink, and total of six dwarves need it as alcohol)
bumblebee honey (not obtainable)
bumblebee mead (source ingredient not obtainable, I've got four guys who drink only this, and eat something not obtainable)
mead (can't use as food ingredient, I've got THREE guys who like only this, no other food or drink, and two guys who like mead and some unobtainable food)
rice beer (can't make rice beer from rice, and it's not plantable)
moghopper juice (can't find moghoppers, I've got a guy who likes both this and gutter cruor)
gutter cruor (evil savage biome only; aka sliver barb alcohol, one of my starting dwarves needs it)
sunshine (good biome only I think; aka sun berry alcohol, never seen it, I've got a guy who likes only this, no other food or drink)
tuber beer (only marshy biome, no merchants from such biome, two of my starting dwarves need it, very popular for some reason)
It's still better than the solid stuff, where statistical dwarf likes something like
worm gut, i.e. part of vermin which is not obtainable. In case of plants though most alcohol-source plants are simply not brought by merchants, or not seen in my biome.
Rice beer and mead seem to be quite popular in my population, I don't know why mead can't be made into meals, or why rice can't be planted (it is both [DRY] and [WET]), but it prevents use of it as food even though I do have mead and I do have rice seeds, so it's a good example of problems the overseer has to face.