Imagine being labeled obese by the age of one.

Dr. Pradeep Reddy, a pediatrician and neonatologist in Marion says 10 to 20 percent of his patients are obese by the time they are a year old.

"Technically you can't call them obese, if you go by the book, since obesity starts at age two," Reddy says. "But these kids are very overweight by the age of 1-2 and that's a tremendous cause for concern."

Childhood obesity is nothing to sneeze at. In 2003-04 and 2005-06, roughly 32 percent of children were overweight or obese, and 16 percent were obese, according to a study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

However a new authoritative analysis published in the May 2008 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association offers a glimmer of hope, showing the obesity epidemic among U.S. children and teens has hit a plateau of sorts, after rising relentlessly for more than two decades.

Despite this, experts say the fact remains that a third of American children are overweight, obese or morbidly obese.

"Overfeeding is a problem," Reddy says. "Parents give a sippy cup to a child to stop them fussing and the child drinks all day. They also eat too much of junk food. All that premade and precooked food parents throw in the microwave is not necessarily healthy. They are filled with more fat and less fiber, which in turn contribute to childhood obesity."

Overweight and obesity puts children at risk for Type 2 diabetes mellitus, insulin resistance, hypertension, obstructive sleep apnea, nonalcoholic steatohepatitis, poor self-esteem, and a lower health-related quality of life.

With overweight children and adolescents more likely to become obese as adults, the health implications are staggering. One study found that approximately 80 percent of children who were overweight at age 10-15 were obese as adults at age 25.

According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, factors contributing to the crisis include:

* Insufficient infant breastfeeding

* A reduction in cereal fiber, fruit, and vegetable intake by children and youth

* Excessive consumption of oversized fast foods and soda

* Decreased energy expenditure caused by excessive sedentary behaviors and a lack of adequate physical activity.

The solution? Parents can play a starring role in turning around the health of their children by adopting a more active lifestyle and better eating habits to get their weight under control.

Famous childhood feeding expert Ellyn Satter, proposed a feeding relationship theory that spoke about the division of responsibility between parent and child.

"Feeding demands a division of responsibility," she said. "Parents are responsible for the what, when and where of feeding; Children are responsible for the how much and whether of eating."

Trusting a child not to starve himself, starting at age one, is a very hard concept for most mothers to swallow, admits Mary Beth Long, RN, a health and nutrition specialist in the Early Head Start program at Franklin Williamson Human Services.

"More often than not the parent gives in when their child is around 18 months old and the child soon discovers Pop-Tarts, suckers, Ding Dongs, Cheetos, and McDonalds. Of course they will like it," Long says. "I have met parents who claim their kids will starve to death if they don't feed them corn dogs!"

While its all right to have junk food from time to time, make sure it's given in moderation, Long says.

As part of her job, Long sees pregnant mothers and children ages 0-3 on a daily basis. She performs nutrition assessments and offers nutrition advice to parents.

"Kids are never hungry when they sit down to eat because they have been sipping milk and juice all day," she says. "If you asked a parent to describe their child as a better eater or drinker, over half would choose better drinker!"

A recent study in Pediatrics found that as of 2004, children ages 2 to 19 were consuming 10 to 15 percent of their total calories from sugar-sweetened beverages and 100 percent fruit juices.

Even though experts recommend no more than 8- 12 ounces of these beverages per day for children ages seven to 18 and only 4-6 ounces for younger children; researchers found that children consumed a whopping average of 25 ounces per day.

"A sippy cup is bad on the teeth, fills stomachs up and kills hunger," Long says. "We advise parents to cut back on the amount of milk and juice they feed their child, so that the child will feel hungrier at mealtimes."

In addition to too much drinking, the biggest problem Long sees in the 0-3 population is their dislike of vegetables. When faced with a choosy eater, Long says its important to keep offering the food to kids.

"It's normal for kids to change their preferences as they grow and all the research backs it up," Long says.

If you're looking for ways to get your children to eat their greens, Jennifer Newbury, a community worker with the Food Stamp Nutrition Education Program, at the University of Illinois Extension, Franklin County advocates hiding vegetables in a casserole or dish; sprinkling some cheese on vegetables to get kids to eat it; making dips with raw veggies and getting the kids to help out with meal preparation.

"While I don't always promote putting cheese on everything, if it's the only way to get them to eat their veggies, then it's better than nothing," she says.

When parents eat unhealthy food and skip exercise they can set bad examples.

And that's why parents need to change first, Newbury says. "If you don't eat broccoli, your kids may not eat broccoli either. If you don't get up and move, your kids won't either."

A recent study in Pediatrics found that parents who recognized that their teenage children were overweight did not do "healthy things" at home to help their children with healthy weight management such as having more fruits and vegetables available.

Rather, the only behavior that they did more frequently was to encourage their children to diet, which was not helpful to weight management over a five-year period, in fact it predicted poorer weight outcomes (i.e., increased weight gain), particularly in girls.

The study authors urge parents to talk less and do more in terms of providing a healthy home environment, which is supportive of healthy eating and physical activity, for their children, when it comes to weight-related matters.

"It has to be a whole lifestyle and family change," Newbury says. "Kids have to see their parents eating healthy and exercising before they will follow suit."