Miss California Crystal Lee performs during the Miss America 2014 pageant, Sunday, September 15, 2013, in Atlantic City, N.J. (Photo by Mel Evans/AP Photo)

“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)

Allie Labutis wears a painted “Merica” on her thigh during the fifth annual Made in America Music Festival in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania September 3, 2016. (Photo by Mark Makela/Reuters)

Miss Hawaii Allison Chu waves to the crowd as she holds one of her shoes during the 2017 Miss America pageant “Show Us Your Shoes” parade Saturday, September 10, 2016, in Atlantic City. (Photo by Chris Szagola/AP Photo)

America in the 1970s: Texas. Motorcyclist loading his possessions onto a truck with the help of his friends in Leakey, May 1973. (Photo by Marc St. Gil/NARA via The Atlantic)

Miss Utah Krissia Beatty competes in the swimsuit competition during the first night of preliminaries of Miss America at Boardwalk Hall in Atlantic City, New Jersey, September 8, 2015. (Photo by Mark Makela/Reuters)

Miss New York Jamie Lynn Macchia waves during the 2016 Miss America pageant “Show Us Your Shoes” parade Saturday, September 12, 2015, in Atlantic City, N.J. (Photo by Michael Ein/The Press of Atlantic City via AP Photo)

A woman sits in a cell at the Los Angeles County Women's jail in Lynwood, California April 26, 2013. (Photo by Lucy Nicholson/Reuters)