Seeker - And the message of "Eat it now even though you're not hungry because you might be hungry later and if you are you won't be allowed any food" is wrong on so many levels I don't know where to start!
I'm going to make this my last post on this because I really need to go and do something useful - but I agree.
My concern would be that his not eating wasn't actually appetite related, but because he was thinking that something more interesting was going on and couldn't be bothered to eat. I'm basing this partly on the fact that OP said he didn't eat much lunch at school because he would rather go and play footie. I'm all for kids being active but they also need to learn that they need to eat properly in their lunch break before rushing off to play, or there won't be another chance until they get home. So I'd be wondering, in the back of my head, whether he wasn't just being a bit of a horror. You'd need to know loads more about the child, his usual behaviour, his behaviour that day etc etc. You generally know whether your child is trying to pull a fast one or not!
I'm not advocating either giving in and feeding him, or starving him - I'd do either of them depending on the details of the circumstances and the child. In fact, I do both things - if dd has eaten well and still says she's hungry then I throw all the snacks she wants in her direction. If she's been a monster that day and has decided not to eat dinner, and then demands a snack, she doesn't get it. I'm not spending ages cooking dinner for her so that she can pass over it in favour of ice cream.
I don't think food should be made an emotional issue either, but I don't plan on letting my dd decide exactly what and when she should eat every time- we need to eat breakfast at the start of the day and that breakfast cannot consist of ice cream, whatever she says! She's only 3 so we're still learning this, but the principle is the same. You do need to have an approximate meal time so to a certain extent you have to eat when food is available - I don't plan on cooking three separate dinners because people are hungry at different times, nor do I want to be cooking at 10.30 at night because someone has decided they are hungry then. But yes, if a child doesn't eat much because they genuinely aren't hungry, then you need to make up for it a bit later.
I do find an apple is a great snack - often have them! And no prep - just grab one from the bowl! And clearly the fruit snack worked ok to keep him going as he wasn't starving at dinner time or he'd have cleaned his plate. 'Stodge',for this child, might over-fill him to the point that he regularly then didn't want dinner, and then did want a snack. Point is, you don't know the details of how this child works. This sounds like a one-off precisely because the OP was worried about it - and trying to make the right decision for one evening is hardly making food an emotional issue, setting the child up for eating issues later. If this is a one-off, then it sounds as though usually the child is fine and eats well and the routine works well for him - if you are confronted with your child doing something they don't normally do, you do wonder if you've reacted well, don't you? And play through all the things you maybe should have done instead? However minor - I think that's part of being a Mum, questioning yourself every time a new circumstance arises.