Would be nice if there was a setting to disable quality for all items (minus walls) where the only stat that changes is maximum health with no additional bonuses.
Could help easily reduce the recipe bloat without having to write in the items 1 by 1 in the disable list.

I have a plan for a setting that disables quality for all items that aren't used in other recipes. It's a bit more complex than you'd think, but it can help with some mod compatibility.

Wouldn't it be enough to just recursively list all ingredients for items with quality buffs, and only create additional versions for these?

That's basically it yes, but sometimes you'd want to use an advanced item for recycling e.g. belts do nothing, but they are a prime place to put quality modules, and recycle the higher quality results for a guaranteed high quality item.

I've been doing something similar to that with my bot mall - the items which don't benefit from quality still have quality modules, then I just recycle anything of above common quality to get some cheap higher quality intermediates.