“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 British soldier from 3 Commando Brigade looks through the sight of his sniper rifle at Camp Gibraltar February 24, 2003 near Kuwait City, Kuwait. (Photo by Ian Waldie/Getty Images)

A painting of a Trabant car bursting through a wall in post unification Berlin, August 1993. (Photo by Steve Eason/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

A woman is helped by others amidst debris at a street in Dolores, the day after the city was hit by a tornado, April 16, 2016. (Photo by Andres Stapff/Reuters)

Kiritimati is a far-flung outpost of the Republic of Kiribati. The world's largest coral atoll, Kiritimati has just one flight a week to either Fiji or Hawaii, four-and-a-half hours in either direction. Tarawa, the capital of Kiribati lies nearly 3,300 km (2,000 miles) to the west – about three weeks by boat. No lawyers are based on Kiritimati and the High Court only comes once or twice a year to clear a backlog of the most serious cases, bringing a public lawyer for defendants who can't afford their own. (Photo by Lincoln Feast/Reuters)

A boy wearing a Lebanon's Hezbollah military outfit and carrying a toy gun walks during the funeral of three Hezbollah fighters who were killed while fighting alongside Syrian army forces in Syria in Nabatieh town, southern Lebanon, October 27, 2015. The fighters names are Hussein Hassan Shreifie, Ali al-Akbar Mohamad Khashfeh and Mohamad Saeed Fawaz. (Photo by Ali Hashisho/Reuters)

A man walks past an advertisement sign promoting a bank in Seoul in this September 3, 2009 file photo. South Korea is expected to release GDP dara this week. (Photo by Lee Jae-Won/Reuters)

A soup for the students is pictured during an activity for the end of the school year at the Padre Jose Maria Velaz school in Caracas, Venezuela July 12, 2016. Due to the faltering socialist economy and the plunge in global oil prices, Venezuela has been in recession since early 2014. Due to the faltering socialist economy and the plunge in global oil prices, Venezuela has been in recession since early 2014. It suffers from the world's highest inflation and is experiencing shortages of basic goods, from milk to medicines. (Photo by Carlos Jasso/Reuters)