“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 tear rolls down the cheek of Karima el-Mahroug, also known as Ruby, a Moroccan woman at the center of ex-Premier Silvio Berlusconi's s*x-for-hire trial, as she reads a statement to reporters during a protest outside the court house, in Milan, Italy, Thursday, April 4, 2013. The Moroccan woman at the center of ex-Premier Silvio Berlusconi's s*x-for-hire trial has denounced what she says is psychological warfare being waged against her by Italian prosecutors. Ruby, read out a lengthy statement Thursday to a gaggle of reporters in front of Milan's courthouse denying she was a prostitute and insisting that prosecutors hear her side of the story. (Photo by Luca Bruno/AP Photo)

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

National Guardsmen are put through riot training in Boston's Commonwealth Armory on Friday, October 18, 1974. Massachusetts Gov. Francis W. Sargent called up the guard to quell school violence, but the city has been relatively calm and the guard has remained in the armories. (Photo by JWG/AP Photo)

Children guarded by Hungarian police play on the ground after being detained along with other migrants who illegally crossed from Serbia to Hungary near the village of Asotthalom, Hungary, September 16, 2015. (Photo by Dado Ruvic/Reuters)

A reveller is tossed into the air as they celebrate the Holi spring festival in Kathmandu on March 12, 2017. The “Holi” festival of colours is a riotous celebration of the coming of spring and falls on the day after the full moon in early March every year. (Photo by Prakash Mathema/AFP Photo)

People play on a beach along the Arabian Sea on a hot summer day in Mumbai, India, April 29, 2016. (Photo by Danish Siddiqui/Reuters)

A boy and a woman run across a railway track as a train approaches in Chengdu, Sichuan province, China, October 8, 2015. Many residents disregard sign prohibiting this kind of illegal crossing and choose to do so to save time, local media reported. (Photo by Hao Fei/Reuters/Western China Metropolis Daily)