Set the player if it's null every FoodStats.onUpdate. This would basically be a band-aid, and would still fail before the first onUpdate call, but it might work to help resolve issues like this in the future
ASM into the modified Sponge code and insert the EntityPlayer into the FoodStats constructor.
See squeek502/SpiceOfLife#99 and https://github.com/SpongePowered/SpongeForge/issues/969 and https://github.com/SpongePowered/SpongeForge/issues/916
Some possible fixes:
FoodStats.onUpdate
. This would basically be a band-aid, and would still fail before the first onUpdate call, but it might work to help resolve issues like this in the future