Quills meal permanent change

[Former user]

I started with quills, put no points into, but used my level 5 rapid advancement on it, which brought me up to 500 quills. Then I leveled up to 6, allowing it to go to mutation level 4. At that point, I had 598 max quills. Then, after a few levels, I ate a meal that increased the level of quills up to 5. After the effects wore off, I was left with 601 max quills permanently. I tried it again, this time noting that I had 685 max quills, and when the effect wore off I was left with 585 max quills permanently. Personally, I think the random quill progression is one in a long list of reasons why quills is the worst mutation in the game, but this could possibly be exploited by cooking a meal every time you level it to get the maximum number of quills.