“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)

Jimmy Arnold, an overweight boy from Rochester, bites into a cake. (Photo by Reg Birkett/Keystone/Getty Images). 14th April 1951

British Liberal politician Cyril Smith relaxes on the beach at Margate, prior to the morning session of the annual Party Conference. (Photo by Keystone/Getty Images). 1979