“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)

An Afghan burqa-clad woman carries a child as she walks along a road in Herat on October 1, 2023. (Photo by Mohsen Karimi/AFP Photo)

A woman in yukata, casual summer kimono, poses for a photo at Fushimi Inari Taisha in Kyoto, Japan on October 2, 2019. (Photo by Matthew Childs/Reuters)

Santa Claus greets a child during a visit to residents of the slum of Petare in Caracas, Venezuela, December 11, 2016. (Photo by Ueslei Marcelino/Reuters)

A child working at Ship breaking yard in Chittagong, Bangladesh on November 14, 2014. (Photo by Pascal Mannaerts/Alamy Stock Photo)

“Mother and Child”. Snow monkey at “Jigokudani hot-spring” in Nagano, Japan. (Photo by Kiyoshi Ookawa)

A child holds a gun at the National Rifle Association (NRA) annual convention in Indianapolis, Indiana, U.S., April 15, 2023. (Photo by Evelyn Hockstein/Reuters)

A young Shiite Muslim child participates in a Muharram procession in Ahmadabad, India, Sunday, October 9, 2016. (Photo by Ajit Solanki/AP Photo)