“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)

Britain's biggest dog, 18 month old great Dane, Freddy seen realxing on the sofa with it's owner Claire Stoneman at their home in Southend-on-Sea, Essex, England. (Photo by Matt Writtle/Barcroft Media)

American students going wild during their Spring Break week-long recess in Cancun, Mexico on March 10, 2007. (Photo by Keystone USA/ZUMA Press/Rex Features/Shutterstock)

Felix Guirola, 52, rides a homemade bike with an advertising banner in Havana, Cuba, July 20, 2016. The handyman, who loves heights, provides advertising space for companies on homemade bikes that tower up to 7.5 meters (24.61 ft). He rides them around Havana in an ingenious way of getting around strict marketing regulations in the Communist-ruled island. (Photo by Alexandre Meneghini/Reuters)

In the mangrove swamps of Quang Lang in Vietnam fishermen use stilts to take them into the deeper water on December 18, 2021. (Photo by Bang Nguyen Trong/Solent News)

A woman carries an umbrella during a heat wave in Rome, Italy, 16 July 2023. Italy is facing the third heatwave of the summer on 16 July bringing record temperatures. The new heatwave is forecast to peak on 18 July, when temperatures in areas of southern Sardinian may reach 48 degrees Celsius, according to forecasts. On 15 July, the health ministry has put on red alert major Italian cities. (Photo by Massimo Percossi/EPA)

A view of the silhouettes of people, passing across a bridge over the frozen Lake Murat, trying to go on their daily lives despite the cold during winter season in Agri, Turkiye on February 10, 2025. (Photo by Abdullah Soylemez/Anadolu via Getty Images)

The Japanese punk rock garage quartet Otoboke Beaver perform at Maggie Mae's at the South by Southwest (SXSW) Music Film Interactive Festival 2017 in Austin, Texas, U.S., March 17, 2017. (Photo by Brian Snyder/Reuters)