Certainly back in the late fifties, food shortages (rationing was only just over) came into play - if someone had cooked a meal using hard to get ingredients and someone else 'turned their nose up' at it, then it could be very difficult to deal with. Children, especially, weren't given a lot of autonomy. I was born in the 60's and remember being told off repeatedly for hating potato (I still do), which was used to bulk out the meat, which was still really expensive. Shepherds Pie and Cottage Pie, with their thick layer of mash on top of a thin layer of meat in gravy was a particular bug bear.
It's only really been in the last twenty years or less that there's been more of a child-centric movement, what with baby-led weaning and gentle parenting, and children being given more of a choice over what they eat. My own lot were't deliberately fed food that I knew they didn't like (it was too expensive to throw away), but there was a remarkable amount of 'I don't like that' just after I'd been out and bought a job lot of fish fingers or sandwich spread or whatever that they'd liked the day before.