Australian professional boxer Ebanie Bridges at the weigh-in ahead of their IBF World Bantamweight Title fight against Shannon O'Connell during the weigh in at Aspire, Leeds, United Kingdom on Friday, December 9, 2022. (Photo by Andrew Couldridge/Action Images via Reuters)

Netherlands' Joosje Burg, left, reacts after Argentina's Agustina Gorzelany's stick catches her on the face during the women's semifinal field hockey match between Argentina and Netherlands at the Yves-du-Manoir Stadium during the 2024 Summer Olympics, Wednesday, August 7, 2024, in Colombes, France. (Photo by Aijaz Rahi/AP Photo)

A relative of a victim of the Ukraine International Airlines PS 752 plane that crashed after taking off from Tehran's Imam Khomeini airport reacts at Boryspil International Airport, outside Kiev, Ukraine on January 8, 2020. (Photo by Serhii Nuzhnenko/Reuters)

Yandex.Eda food delivery service employees by Barrikadnaya Station of the Moscow Metro in Moscow, Russia on April 12, 2020. Russian President Vladimir Putin has expanded non-working period till April 30, 2020 to prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus. (Photo by Sergei Savostyanov/TASS via Getty Images)

Cars submerge in water as heavy rain floods the Southern part of the country in Najaf, Iraq on January 04, 2023. (Photo by Karar Essa/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)

A man holds tasbih, or prayer beads, as he sits with a plate of food before breaking fast during the fasting month of Ramadan, at a roadside in Karachi, Pakistan on March 28, 2023. (Photo by Akhtar Soomro/Reuters)

MotoGP Ducati Lenovo Team rider Marc Marquez (R) of Spain and his girlfriend Gemma Pinto (L) celebrate his World Champion 2025 title after the race at the Motorcycling Grand Prix of Japan in Motegi, Tochigi Prefecture, northeastern Japan, 28 September 2025. (Photo by Franck Robichon/EPA)

“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)