It seems like the battle against excessive weight has won ground lately, as rates of childhood obesity in the U.S. appear to have leveled off after a 25-year increase, results of a new federal survey show.

“After 25 years of extraordinarily bad news about childhood obesity, this study provides a glimmer of hope,” Dr. David Ludwig, director of the childhood obesity program at Children’s Hospital in Boston said, as quoted by the New York Times.

Researchers led by Cynthia Ogden of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention examined height and weight measurements for 8,165 people ages 2 to 19 taken in government surveys from 2003 through 2006, allowing them to calculate body mass index, or BMI, a measure of obesity.

The results showed that obesity rates remained essentially unchanged from 1999 to 2006. More exactly, the survey found that 32 percent were considered at risk for obesity, 16 percent were obese, and 11 percent were extremely obese. The rates were basically the same as those in 2003-2004.

“It looks like it’s leveling off. It could finally be stabilizing,” Ogden said, but it’s too soon to conclude that obesity rates will decrease in the near future, she added. Only data from 2007-2008 will show whether we should be optimistic about it, and those data won’t be available until the end of next year or early 2010. “There’s some reason to be cautiously optimistic.”

The childhood obesity epidemic has become a national problem for years. The worst part is that significant changes in the U.S. diet dating back decades, including fatty and sugary fast foods, snacks, processed foods and beverages and fewer fresh fruits and vegetables, do not seem to help very much. Also, it’s no longer a secret that most children would rather play video games and watch TV rather than do outside activities. The CDC recommends moderate activities such as walking or riding a bike for at least one hour per day.

Childhood obesity has become a major reason of concern, as most of the obese children are more likely to develop obesity-related diseases. According to the American Diabetes Association, about 176,500 children and adolescents younger than 20 have diabetes, and 2 million teenagers have blood glucose levels higher than normal, a condition called pre-diabetes.

Moreover, a study led by researchers at the University of North Carolina and published last month in the journal Dynamic Medicine showed children having a sedentary lifestyle are up to six times likelier to be at serious risk of heart disease later in life than active peers. It is no longer a secret that leading a sedentary life is linked to obesity.

“Children today live a very sedentary life and are prone to obesity. This is the first study to examine the importance of childhood fitness levels on your metabolism as a teenager. Previously we didn’t know low fitness levels were an influence. It’s obvious now that there is a link and this is something which we need to pay attention to by encouraging our kids to keep fit, or suffer the consequences later in life,” lead author of the study Robert McMurray said at the time.

McMurray found that almost half of the teenagers participating in his study had developed at least one characteristic of metabolic syndrome (a group of symptoms including obesity, abnormal fat levels in the blood, high blood pressure, high cholesterol and insulin problems). Metabolic syndrome can further lead to heart disease, diabetes and increased risk of stroke.

There should be more public health campaigns to combat childhood obesity, Ludwig said. Also national efforts are needed to reduce the number of overweight and obese kids, including regulating junk food advertisements to children and providing more money, including insurance reimbursement, for obesity prevention and treatment program.

Researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health’s Center for Human Nutrition have already warned that 75 percent of adults, and nearly 24 percent of U.S. children and adolescents will be overweight or obese by 2015 if nothing is done to curb obesity.