The base effects in question are only linked to ingestibles however - specifically food... so I had the thought that perhaps if I could restrict my effect scripts to only run in menumode, that might help (ideally only while in the pipboy). That would mean that food "wouldn't work" if hotkeyed and consumed outside of the pipboy, but I can live with that if it fixes my other problem.
...but I don't think I can use a menumode block in an effect script, and seems that I need the scripteffectstart block anyhow...
So how would I restrict that? Is there a way to detect the menumode in an if statement that I could wrap around the interior of my block?