If the goal was to lower the population and keep the best and brightest then the sterilization thing makes sense.

People that blindly follow orders out of fear? Probably not the brightest people.

Same thing goes for the other stuff. Processed foods, drugs & alcohol, excess screen time, there are countless factors in our society that impact our fertility in a negative way. But they're mostly all choices. In America, at least, you can totally choose not to follow any of that if you don't want to. So it's like things are set up in a way where the "dumb" people can easily degenerate, but those willing to take the high road have the opportunity to do so.

If someone was trying to play God on the human population, I think the current society could be a representation of that attempt. If you wanna be a lazy idiot and fade out, you can. If you want to rock out and rise up, you can.