“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 wedding couple poses for a photographer during a wedding photo shoot March 9, 2011 in Hanoi, Vietnam. Its is traditional for middle and upper class Vietnamese couples do a wedding fashion shoot posing for wedding portraits a few weeks before the wedding so that a wedding photo book is produced. (Photo by Paula Bronstein /Getty Images)

A photograph taken on November 20, 2021 shows the barberry berries with water drops after a rain in the garden outside Moscow. (Photo by Yuri Kadobnov/AFP Photo)

Kacey Musgraves performs at the 49th annual CMA Awards at the Bridgestone Arena on Wednesday, November 4, 2015, in Nashville, Tenn. (Photo by Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP Photo)

A teenager holds a bag of Mangos, a tropical fruit who grow up in threes in Caracas, Venezuela on June 22, 2016. The shortage of food especially in areas in extreme poverty had made Mangos the daily food. (Photo by Alejandro Cegarra/The Washington Post)

Young Lebanese women wearing protective masks and gloves against the coronavirus pandemic, stand on August 5, 2020 amid the rubble in Beirut's Gimmayzeh commercial district which was heavily damaged by the previous day's powerful explosion that tore through Lebanon's capital, resulting from the ignition of a huge depot of ammonium nitrate at the city's main port. Rescuers searched for survivors in Beirut after a cataclysmic explosion at the port sowed devastation across entire neighbourhoods, killing more than 100 people, wounding thousands and plunging Lebanon deeper into crisis. The blast, which appeared to have been caused by a fire igniting 2,750 tonnes of ammonium nitrate left unsecured in a warehouse, was felt as far away as Cyprus, some 150 miles (240 kilometres) to the northwest. (Photo by AFP Photo/Stringer)

Students with torches protest against the alleged encroachment of Nepal border by India in far west of Nepal, during the 49th day of a lockdown imposed by the government amid concerns about the spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), in Kathmandu, Nepal on May 11, 2020. (Photo by Navesh Chitrakar/Reuters)

A staff member, wearing a face mask following the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak, looks at a robot at the venue for the World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC) in Shanghai, China on July 9, 2020. (Photo by Aly Song/Reuters)