There is one hard and fast food rule at our house, no exceptions. If it was made for a meal you have to take one bite even if you have tried it before. You don't have to eat any more, but you have to try it and you have to be polite about it.
We eventually went to that too. We started with just having a selection and letting the kids choose what they want. Possibly if we'd had total control over early diet, this would have worked. However, both kids were in day care (family daycare) during the school year, and they had the opportunity to develop a taste for processed foods (which I would have chosen to delay until later). When it became clear that they were going to choose carbs only unless we interfered, we went to the one bite per year of age rule. Disaster. Every dinner was a miserable argument with one or both children. Finally we went to the politeness bite--with a twist. Small servings of everything prepared, a politeness bite of each offering, and if they opted not to go past the politeness bite, they had to choose a substitute from the same food group before having seconds on anything else. It has worked really well for us. True, for quite a while the kids ate a lot of peanut butter on whole wheat and a lot of raw carrots
, but over time they have broadened their palettes (sp?) and--more importantly--my DD was not nourishing herself on endless servings of pasta, rice and tortillas and my DS was not on the floor flipping out about finishing his broccoli
