It seems to me a lot of this is simply missing the point. Just because a kid could eat a food without a major medical incident, and just because they will eat it under conditions of sufficient duress (famine, say, or being in the military), doesn't mean that they aren't having a very real, very unpleasant subjective experience. Some people taste chemical compounds that others don't. (Remember that experiment in biology class?) So why put your kids through that, unless your overriding goal is just to prove that you're the boss and make them knuckle under?
I was picky about vegetables as a kid, and to this day I have been unable to overcome my aversion to asparagus and squash. Both induce mild nausea in me. A wide range of vegetables also taste unbearably bitter to me, unless they are picked very young and are very fresh. Yes, I could have choked these things down if I'd had to, but my parents wisely chose not to make me miserable. I now love vegetables, provided I have control over my choices.
Comparing this to kids who have been so badly parented that they don't know how to make their bed or shave, or have an "aversion" to anything besides junk food, is a red herring.
