A recruitment drive during the First World War at Trafalgar Square, London. (Photo by Central Press/Getty Images)

Models pose backstage ahead of the Gary Bigeni show during Rosemount Australian Fashion Week Spring/Summer 2011/12 at Overseas Passenger Terminal on May 4, 2011 in Sydney, Australia. (Photo by Matt King/Getty Images)

Models present creation for the 7th Hosa Cup China Swimwear Design contest and Hosa Swimwear Trend fashion show on day five of China Fashion Week A/W 2011 on March 28, 2011 in Beijing, China (Photo by Feng Li/Getty Images)

Members of the Communist New Fourth Army on parade. Note how the modern equipment contrasts with the shoeless soldiers in the foreground. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images). 6th July 1946

Choristers from a Norwegian choir on a visit to New York take photographs in Times Square. (Photo by Vecchio/Three Lions/Getty Images). Circa 1956

“Originally published in the April 9, 1951, issue of LIFE magazine, W. Eugene Smith’s photo essay, «Spanish Village», has been lauded for more than six decades as the most moving photographic portrait ever made of daily life in rural Spain during the rule of dictator Francisco Franco”. – Time & Life Pictures. Photo: His wife, daughter, granddaughter and friends have their last earthly visit with a villager. (Photo by W. Eugene Smith/Time & Life Pictures)

“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)