I've been chatting with people lately who were pretty much raised the way I was: you eat what's put in front of you without fussing about it, and be glad you have food.

When my kids were little, my ex-husband said to me, "Look, I'll eat at least a little of anything you put on my plate as an example for the kids, but I just can't do green beans."

So we made a policy that everybody got to choose one food to refuse when it was served. Ex-husband chose green beans, my daughter chose peas (I think), and my son chose spinach/chard (he wanted to choose "anything green" but it didn't fly).

There were things that took the kids a very long time to eat, like my son cutting the "skin" off one slice of zucchini, removing the seeds, slicing it in little wedges like a pie, and choking each little piece down while making gagging sounds. But they had to have at least a token amount of everything else but the chosen evil food. The system served us well.