“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)

Flamingoes in Laguna Colorada, Altiplano, Bolivia, South America in 2018. (Photo by Oksana Belikova/Rex Features/Shutterstock)

“Serengeti National Park encompasses 5,700 square miles of grassy plains and woodlands near the northern border of Tanzania, and is home to more than 3,500 lions grouped into a couple dozen prides. Photographer Nick Nichols and videographer Nathan Williamson made several extended trips to the Serengeti between July 2011 and January 2013, determined to break new visual ground in their coverage of the Serengeti Lions”. Photo: Cubs of the Simba East pride: too young to kill but old enough to crave meat. Adult females, and sometimes males, do the hunting. Zebras and wildebeests rank high as chosen prey in the rainy season. (Photo by Michael Nichols/National Geographic via The Atlantic)

A cat sits in front of a retro car owned by retired mechanic Mikhail Krasinets at an open-air museum of Soviet-era vehicles in the village of Chernousovo, Tula region, Russia on September 27, 2018. In the remote village of Chernousovo, retired mechanic Mikhail Krasinets tends to more than 300 ramshackle, Soviet-era cars, remnants of a once vibrant auto industry that crumbled with the fall of the Soviet Union. (Photo by Maxim Shemetov/Reuters)

“The Dragon and The Hopper”. Eyrean earless dragon (Tympanocryptis tetraporophora) standing tall on a very hot rock in western Queensland. For a short time it was joined by a hopper, who jumped off before becoming lunch. (Photo by Harrison Warne/Nature Conservancy Australia 2021 Photo Contest)

Extras in the arena of the “Fete des Vignerons” (winegrowers' festival in French), during the last rehearsal in Vevey, Switzerland, 17 July 2019. Organized by the brotherhood of winegrowers, the event will celebrate winemaking from 18 July to 11 August. The arena has a capacity of 20,000 spectators and hosts a giant central LED floor of approximately 800 square meters. (Photo by Laurent Gilliéron/EPA/EFE)

The pedestrian zone on the banks of the “Parco della Pace” at Lake Maggiore is flooded due to flooding, on Thursday, October 24, 2019 in Locarno, Switzerland. (Photo by Samuel Golay/Ti-Press/Keystoen)

Visitors take pictures inside Kuala Lumpur Tower's “Sky Box”, one of the city's touristic attractions, in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, 05 January 2024. Malaysian Tourism Minister Tiong King Sing recently said that the tourism industry “is not just an engine for economic growth but also a bridge for cultural exchange and international friendship”. (Photo by Fazry Ismail/EPA/EFE)