A woman walks in front of an art installation made of artificial fruits and vegetables during the “Moscow Autumn” festival in central Moscow, September 14, 2015. (Photo by Maxim Zmeyev/Reuters)

People stand around a leopard with its head stuck in a vessel in Rajsamand district of Rajasthan state, India, Wednesday, September 30, 2015. The leopard's head got stuck when it attempted to drink water from the pot, according to news reports. Forest officials tranquilized the animal and sawed off the vessel later in the day. (Photo by Kabir Jethi/AP Photo)

Wedges of an orange generate enough current and electrical juice – 3.5 volts – to power an LED. The fruit’s citric acid helps electrons flow from galvanized nails to copper wire in this 14-hour exposure. This image was published in September’s Visions of Earth, a trio of photos that appear in each issue of National Geographic. (Photo by Caleb Charland/National Geographic)

In this Sunday, August 5, 2018 photo, a dancer winces in pain as she is whipped by a fellow dancer in an adaptation of the Inca warrior dance known as “Kachampa”, during celebrations honoring Our Lady of Copacabana, in Cuzco, Peru. (Photo by Martin Mejia/AP Photo)

People are reflected in a shop window as they walk along a street in a shopping district in Tokyo, Japan June 25, 2015. (Photo by Thomas Peter/Reuters)

Karis, an 8 week old lion cub, growls at a pumpkin as she explores a Halloween treat put in her enclosure by staff at Blair Drummond Safari Park near Stirling, Scotland, Tuesday, October 29, 2013. (Photo by Andrew Milligan/AP Photo/PA Wire)

A girl feeds a squirrel in Bolivar Square, in Caracas, Venezuela on June 4, 2024. (Photo by Gaby Oraa/Reuters)

“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)