An ambulance with emergency lights on makes its way through snowfall in Iowa, US on December 21, 2022. (Photo by Joseph Cress/AP Photo)

A person wears socks on shoes, as people queue to enter Liberty Inauguration ball, on inauguration day of Donald Trump's second presidential term, in Washington, U.S. January 20, 2025. (Photo by Jeenah Moon/Reuters)

Fire runners in devil costumes gather to enlighten their stick mounted firecrackers during the “Correfocs” at the “Fiesta Major” of the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona, Spain on April 15, 2023. (Photo by Matthias Oesterle/Alamy Live News)

Metropolitan Police run as they escort people, some without shoes, away from a shooting scene in the northwest part of the city on April 22, 2022 in Washington, DC. Police evacuated residents from the shooting scene Friday afternoon and there were reports of several shooting victims. (Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)

A model walks the runway during the Shona Joy “Le Long de la Côte” collection launch runway on September 21, 2023 in Sydney, Australia. (Photo by Brendon Thorne/Getty Images)

Markisa “Kis” Blount, left, helps leads a dance based exercise class in Franklin Square as part of the FITDC’s Juneteenth Health and Wellness Fair on Monday June 19, 2023 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Matt McClain/The Washington Post)

Handlers control the giant puppet MOCCO during a special training session in Takamori, Nagano prefecture, Friday, April 23, 2021. Tokyo 2020 organizers created about 10 meter-tall puppet to symbolize the spirit of the people from the regions affected by the 2011 earthquake and tsunami. The puppet will travel from Tohoku to Tokyo in May to be in place for the games scheduled to open in July. (Photo by Koji Ueda/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)