In this September 14, 2017 photo, young women pose for a photo inside their squatter building that used to house the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) in the Mangueira slum of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Many lower-middle class Brazilians who gained ground during the boom years have since slid back closer to the poverty line. (Photo by Felipe Dana/AP Photo)

A wide-angle view shows the ascent of the shuttle Challenger on January 28, 1986. In the seconds after ignition, the rocket engines' hot blast began the process of destruction. (Photo by NASA)

An American soldier walks ahead of an MKIV (Mark IV) British-made tank, circa 1918. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Sеx worker Geraldine, wearing cat make-up, excitedly holds up a dress she is thinking of buying from a street vendor, so that her partner, sitting nearby to keep her company, can see it, as she waits for clients outside the Revolution subway station, in Mexico City, Saturday, March 13, 2021. According to Geraldine, 30, the pandemic has cut clients and increased risks to the sеx workers but has also brought out more assistance for them too, both from dedicated organizations such as the activist group Brigada Callejera or “The Street Brigade” and from individuals who have donated food or clothing. (Photo by Rebecca Blackwell/AP Photo)

A blue tit takes umbrage at a wing mirror at Suffolk Wildlife Trust’s Arger Fen & Spouse’s Vale reserve in United Kingdom on April 16, 2021. (Photo by Angela Lord/Triangle News)

Noel Brandon known as DJ IAMNOEL plays his set on a balcony in downtown San Diego, California on April 11, 2020. NOEL was inspired by other countries and wanted to give back. Residents went on their balconies at 8pm to cheer in support for the frontline workers, afterwards NOEL played his set to cheer up the locals who have been quarantined like many other cities around the world due to Coronavirus. (Photo by Ariana Drehsler/AFP Photo)

A Cambodian man sells shoes on a motorized cart travelling along a street in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, 30 April 2020. Cambodian authorities are enforcing strict traffic rules in an effort to cut down traffic accidents on the road as a new land traffic law will go into effect in the beggining of of May 2020. (Photo by Mak Remissa/EPA/EFE)

“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)