Dynamic validation list

Hi,

I have a list that looks like this:

Category - value
food-fish
food-chips
beverage-beer
beverage-wine

Now I would like to use this list as a conditional validation list. So if the field concerns food only the food values are selectable.
There is a solution: create a list for all categories and use an IF in the source field of the validation. However, I would like a more generic solution, I don't want to create all these lists. Is there some other way to make this work?

Cheers,
D.