Brad Snead walks past melting ice on the Cook Inlet beach, Saturday, March 26, 2011, in Kenai, Alaska, while looking for agates. (AP Photo/Peninsula Clarion, M. Scott Moon)

“The most serious health problem in the U.S. today is obesity.” Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? But that pronouncement about obesity’s primacy in the hierarchy of national health problems is not new. Rather, it’s the opening line to a remarkable article published 60 years ago in LIFE magazine. This photographs made by Martha Holmes to illustrate that March 1954 article, titled “The Plague of Overweight.” Photo: Dorothy Bradley (left), photographed for LIFE magazine article on obesity, 1949. (Photo by Martha Holmes/Time & Life Pictures)

A gold mine worker displays gold in a local mine in Al-Ibedia locality at River Nile State, July 30, 2013. (Photo by Mohamed Nureldin Abdallah/Reuters)

Iceland horses play on a meadow of a stud farm in Obernhain near Frankfurt, Germany, as the sun rises Thursday, July 23, 2020. (Photo by Michael Probst/AP Photo)

Early morning paddle boarder enjoys late days of summer on Trent Severn Waterway in Rosedale, Ont., Thursday, September 3, 2020. (Photo by Canadian Press/Rex Features/Shutterstock)

NHRA top fuel driver Kyle Wurtzel explodes an engine on fire during qualifying for the E3 Spark Plugs Nationals at Lucas Oil Raceway. in Clermont, Indiana on July 11, 2020. (Photo by Mark J. Rebilas/USA TODAY Sports)

A Citroen Ami One concept car sits on display during the media day of the Auto Shanghai 2019 motor show in Shanghai, China, 16 April 2019. The 18th Shanghai international automobile industry exhibition runs from 16 to 25 April. (Photo by Wu Hong/EPA/EFE)

Members of a dance troupe participate in the Cabildo de Getsemani parade as part of the 208th Independence celebrations in Carta​gena, Colombia, 10 November 2019. (Photo by Ricardo Maldonado Rozo/EPA/EFE)