Sugar Wars: Junk Food, Junk Science, or Both?

Sugar Wars: Junk Food, Junk Science, or Both? - Hit & Run : Reason.com:
"Is eating too much sugar bad for you? 
And what's too much? 
As it happens average American per capita consumption of caloric sweeteners like refined cane sugar and high-fructose corn syrup is down from 111 grams per day in 1999 to 94 grams per day today. 
However, 94 grams per day adds up to over 75 pounds of sugar per year per person. 
Nearly 80 percent of the sugar we consume is found in candy, snack foods, and sweetened beverages, and is not inherent in the fruits and vegetables we also eat. 
A year ago, the government recommended that Americans get no more than 10 percent of their daily calories from added sugars. 
In 2,000 calorie per day standard diet, that would mean eating fewer than 200 calories in the form of sugar. 
Current consumption of 94 grams of sugar translates to 358 calories per day. 
(The U.S. Department of Agriculture has a different calculation in which per person annual consumption of caloric sweeteners peaked at 153.1 pounds in 1999 and fell to only 131.1 pounds in 2014.)

...In fact, as Americans consumed more calories, including more calories from added sugars, per capita the rates of obesity and Type 2 Diabetes soared.

As my colleague Brown astutely observed:

A report published last fall found that government nutrition rules have been and are still based more on money and politics than sound science. The latest update to federal dietary guidelines still cautions against saturated fat and sodium. Members of the committee that developed these guidelines have accepted funding from industry groups, such as the Tree Nut Council, and food companies such as Unilever. ...

Funding good nutrition research is expensive, and we shouldn't automatically look at industry-funded studies or researchers who accept food-industry funding as suspect. But let's not pretend like this sugar scandal is simply a relic of the bad old days of non-disclosure and undue influence. There continues to be every bit as much reason to look skeptically at government dietary advice today as there was in the 20th Century..."