I never replace food (unless mould or something was discovered/it was dropped). You eat the meal you’re given, or you don’t eat. However, I won’t get into confrontation over it, i state it in a calm tone. If you don’t like it, we don’t have it for several months until they’ve forgotten and will try again with no fuss, but on the night it’s that or nothing. I never force them to finish a meal, but pudding is a no if not finished. Pudding doesn’t happen daily, when it does it’s often fresh or tinned fruit. My DS is on a very lower no sugar and lower salt diet for a kidney condition, so any pudding isn’t full of normal sugar. Sometimes I bake cakes (Usually no honey or anything with high sugar due to the diet requirements, sometimes mashed banana/other fruit or other things that naturally sweeten it),, usually they include other bits and bobs that have useful nutrients and interesting flavours (Nuts, vegetables, spices etc) and if we have those we’ve often done lots of activity that day (long walks up hills etc.). If it’s something else like a SF cake, a smaller main leaves room for the pudding. If there’s whining, I tend to say ‘that’s a shame, we’ll have (meal they like) tomorrow’ and leave it at that. Sometimes, I might leave the room to stop them engaging with me, ‘Oh, I’ve just got to empty the washing machine’ type thing, when I come back it’s often stopped as an issue (no audience). Otherwise, I happily clear a full plate away without fuss, but they won’t get anything else and will usually be given the same meal for the following days lunch in a non confrontational manner. Sometimes I’ll change it up a bit (whack a chicken salad in a wrap or melt some cheese on a Pasta dish).
I had a serious ED for about 20 years (Started as child), so I’m careful about attitudes to food. We talk about why it’s good to eat and the nutrients and energy we need and how the different food groups interplay. We don’t use food as a reward, we don’t take it away as a punishment. We don’t talk about it in competitive/emotive terms ‘Defeat this’ or ‘I’m going to destroy it’ (yes, my DH spoke like that before. Weird.) or ‘this is sinful/indulgent’. We do talk about flavours and textures and what goes well together, though. I allow him to experiment, play with food (carrot sticks can talk), eat in a weird way (eat the edges, then the middle/take apart sandwich/eat separate foods in an order). Our rule tends to be if possible, vegetables first. I say rule, it isn’t a rule actually, it’s just encouraged as part of ‘eat what you like least first and best last’. Im careful with portion size and would rather underserve and give seconds than overserve. Snack wise, an hour and a half prior to dinner snacks stop. Before that, it’s mainly fresh fruit. Occasionally something else, but any time they’re hungry, they’re allowed fruit bar that last part of the day. I find that helps. Equally, with the whining, I tend towards ‘Oh, sorry darling, I can’t understand what you’re saying when you speak that way. I’m sure I could understand if you spoke in your lovely, normal voice’. I think lack of confrontation is really important, but I think replacing food can be tricky and lose why we’re eating (to get nutrients, not just because we like the flavour). One last thing that helps us is explaining to our DC that it often takes 5-20 times of eating a food to ‘like it’ and that can include a meal where flavours mix (eg. They’ve had mushrooms, but not mushrooms in beef stew). Now my DS will sometimes say ‘I don’t like it, but maybe I will next time. Just like Dad didn’t like coffee, but now he drinks it every day’. It’s taken a while to get to that point, but reminding and explaining that fact really helped after a while.