Here are some strange things parents often believe about children and food:

• If I do not make my child eat/drink, they will starve/perish.
• Children's diets must be meticulously controlled or they will eat all the "wrong" things and too few of the "right" things.
• Children are inherently picky and should be served separate "child-friendly" food.
• A good way to incentivize bites of the "right" things is to make it a requirement before bites of the "wrong" thing.

My wife and I reject all four of these beliefs, and (n=2) our children are healthy, happy, and not at all picky. We always offer them the same things we eat. We never bring out "kid food", though they can have as much of any item on the table as they want (e.g., if we happen to be serving cantalope and only cantaloupe sounds good to them, they can help themselves to that). We don't always do dessert, but when we do, we serve it along with everything else. (Edit to clarify in the example that adults pick the meal and kids pick whatever they want to eat in the meal, which a comment below seems to misunderstand).

On the whole, their biology has done a great job of regulating their eating and drinking. My oldest (age 5) has recently gotten into spicy food to be like me—absolutely bonkers to my friend whose kid just recently accepted lettuce into his diet. My kids' relationship with food has been happy for us, and we've avoided the intense stress I've seen some parents face with their kids and food.

The one downside with giving our kids delicious adult food is that they are now food snobs specifically with regard to the NYT vegan mac and cheese recipe over the $2 Kraft box, which is inconvenient when we visit friends. This is not to say they eat lots of fancy complex things. Most of our recipes are pretty simple.