Stepping back a bit from the direct arguments, since that probably leads nowhere and it might lead there fairly quickly, I honestly don't think any of us want pointless inventory nonsense to be a big factor. Busywork does not help the core gameplay, and pointless inventory fidgeting is just that, busywork.
The question then becomes whether spells and overall character health should be a resource managed aggressively, meaning you really save all your cool spells and once-per-rest abilities a whole lot just in case you might need them, or if it should be completely unlimited, something you blow your load of every single fight. Or something in between.
It is obvious that infinite spellcasting doesn't work, but at the same time it really isn't a very funny game if we get fancy abilities and most people resist ever using them because those abilities are once per long rest and who knows when the next long rest will be and whether the ability will be needed five minutes from now. This kind of hoarding is very, very common. And that is absolutely not the situation that I really think anyone wants.
It is also worth remembering that recovery of health in 5E isn't meant to purely be "that thing that clerics do" anymore. Resting is a major source of health recovery. Short rests allow characters to spend hit dice to recover health, and long rests always heal to max and recover half a character's hit dice.
So what we should aim for is a flexible way to let people rest fairly often, if they need to, or less often, if they don't need to rest or don't want to, without letting rest becoming something you do every single time you've been in a fight, in order to keep both health and ability usage something players manage without becoming something that players outright fear using and losing.
I think a better approach to this, rather than trying to turn pointless food items into a meaningful thing, is probably to do away with it entirely (maybe we can sell the food and booze?) and simply add some restrictions on when long resting is possible. We do not have time, so one long rest per 24 hours is not possible, but starting certain fights should block the ability to long rest. It makes no sense to clean out the outside of the gobbo camp, then go inside and everybody is totally oblivious and you can rest for a week, and none of them ever peak outside and notice the carnage.
Start the village cleansing and again, if you leave and take a long rest then it hardly makes sense that the remaining gobbos haven't called for reinforcements. Druid grove is the same thing, obviously. Ethel would presumably also call some friends if you delay, and the spider queen should reasonably be able to gather a lot more family members too, in case you don't clear that map in one go.
But aside from those situations, I really do not see any reason to limit how much the player is resting. But maybe it could be connected with a fatigue mechanic that takes into consideration how much damage characters in the party have suffered, how many steps they walked, how much they've jumped, how many fights they've been in, and so on?
I don't really have the answer but while I don't think spells should be infinite in every single fight, I also don't like the current camp supplies mechanic.
