I should be clearer here, what I meant by 'spam feeding' is to just feed them a basic acceptable item ex: Distilled Water (just an example) to move their star count along.
Then when they're at the proper star count (seen by checking how their doing) only at this stage feed them the evolve food item until they actually evolve.
I was confused by the food charts on this site on what was a basic food item to give them, turns out any of them on the list will do this job.
I thought the stars by those items on the list meant something like more effective (to make them grow faster) but it doesn't seem to be the case?
Note: I felt my original post here came up short and I couldn't edit it.