I have also found in past plus with the most recent lot I built (within the last week - which had multiple floors, a semi-attached living space with a mini-fridge, and an upstairs and downstairs refrigerator of two different types) that the ability of the household Sims and to access leftovers and ice cream did not seem to behave any differently than previously. I use this function almost exclusively to feed my large households... I prepare multiple types of meals (or ice cream/baked goods) and drag them to any of the refrigerators in the home. The refrigerator contents all sync. If I want to direct someone to get food I choose 'Get Leftovers' on one of the refrigerators or the mini-refrigerator (as @jpkarlsen suggested). If I don't direct them to do this they do it nicely autonomously.
@jpkarlsen ... thank you for the information/tests on the nuances of how they behave if directed in overlapping ways to access leftovers from the same platter. Interesting... and good to know!
This method seems to help my households not get fat from eating when called to a meal even if they aren't hungry and from a lot of the musical chairs meal chaos that came when I forced it with planned meal times and call to meal commands. I save the chaos of that for holidays and such. LOL! That saved me some sanity as well since I love huge households. 🙂
I don't have Mods and CC, though, so maybe that could be a factor?