I thought I would comment on a few things, although I am not a parent.

I don't agree with hitting as punishment either, but from personal experience I know that from the first couple of times my mom spanked my bum...I was so scared of it happening again I smartened up real good. I am sure there are better methods out there, but this one worked for me. I haven't noticed time-outs or sitting in the corner to work very well, but maybe that's not a representative sample that I have observed.

As for the healthy eating thing, it can get to a point where it backfires. Maybe this only happens with certain kids, but my best friend grew up in a household that only ate very healthy (no sweets and low/no-fat everything in their cupboard) and whenever she was out of that environment she would stuff her face with sweets! She eats more candy and chips than probably anyone I know. Also, because her parents would buy stuff like no-butter microwave popcorn, her and her siblings would turn around and add massive amounts of melted butter and salt to it to compensate. That's even worse than just buying the butter flavored stuff IMO. You starting to see what I mean? Their family is healthy in other ways, like exercise, which is probably a good thing, to balance out the kids' binge-junk-food-eating!