I'm not denying that, but all the stats I've seen indicate that the Covid lockdowns, the masks, the online learning and the general indolence we've inculcated them with over the past couple of years has contributed to making the problem significantly worse.

I see many kids in my town always outside playing, riding a bicycle, etc. They are slim.

There are kids in town I only see getting off the school bus to dissapear inside the house and never do anything outside. They are so obese it's a "guess the gender" game and if the teachers groom them into it, they will think them feeling like shit and discomfort with their body means they are trans.

Inactivity / glued to a screen all day + constant access to food. Since always inside, extra whining at the parents to get food that will pacify them.

My parents sent us to play outside if we complained to get food before meal time. You can see which parents do that, and which parents give the kids food and oversized meals at every hint of begging for more.

The government lockdowns accelerated this trend, but it kept getting worse and worse before that.

Also, let's consider that the governmental intervention in food created the homogenization of our diets by making it into varieties of corn syrup. The corn that we grow, specifically, that has almost no protein in it, unlike the Maize of earlier civilizations.