“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)

Film technicians at Pinewood Studios set up a miniature air crash sequence for the Jack Gold film “The Medusa Touch”, using scale models of a Boeing 747 and a skyscraper. (Photo by Alan F. Davis/Keystone/Getty Images). 9th August 1977

Life in lockdown: Schoolteacher Marzio Toniolo, 35, takes a picture of his two-year-old daughter Bianca painting his toenails as they while away time at home in San Fiorano, one of the original “red zone” towns in northern Italy that has now been extended to the whole country, as his wife, Bianca's mum Chiara Zuddas looks out from their balcony, March 20, 2020. Toniolo has been documenting how his family has dealt with being under quarantine since it began for them in February. (Photo by Marzio Toniolo via Reuters)

Homeless people receive free food offered by the Telangana state governement during a 21-day government-imposed nationwide lockdown as a preventive measure against the COVID-19 coronavirus in Hyderabad on March 26, 2020. (Photo by Noah Seelam/AFP Photo)

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

Three young women preparing a guy. They are sitting him on a keg labelled “gun powder”. (Photo by Fox Photos/Getty Images). 1929

A crowd of tourists walk on the street near Kiyomizu-dera temple in Kyoto, western Japan on March 30, 2023. (Photo by Issei Kato/Reuters)

Cast member Dan Stevens points at Kathryn Newton's heels as they attend a premiere for the film “Abigail” in Los Angeles, California on April 18, 2024. (Photo by Mario Anzuoni/Reuters)