I don't think anyone defends sugar as good for you, but there is a lot of research showing that dietary saturated fats can actually be good for you. Especially if the concern is diabetes, ketogenic diets can be extremely beneficial as the body is burning primarily fat rather than glucose and glycogen.
> Despite comparable weight gain after 49 days, this double-blind trial showed that overeating energy from PUFAs prevented deposition of liver fat and visceral and total fat compared with SFAs. Excess energy from SFAs caused an increase of liver fat compared with PUFAs. Further, the inhibitory effect of PUFAs on ectopic fat was accompanied by an augmented increase in lean tissue and less total body fat deposition compared with SFAs. Thus, the type of fat in the diet seems to be a novel and important determinant of liver fat accumulation, fat distribution, and body composition during moderate weight gain. We also observed fatty acid–dependent differences in adipose tissue gene expression. The significant decrease in pancreatic fat in both groups during weight gain was an unexpected finding that needs confirmation due to the low amounts of pancreatic fat in this lean population.
The crank diet influencers who were previously into saturated fats being good sometimes now think sugar is good because of the influence of a dead crank diet influencer named Ray Peat.
I don't know who Ray Peatis but there are cranks on both sides of any issue. To point to one example that you may have seen and use that to discredit all others isn't doing anyone any good.
I ate keto for a couple years and still generally fall closer to that bucket, though I'm not dealing with any health issues and started eating some breads and carbs again. All the researchers, dieticians, and excercise/fitness coaches I learned from are all still agreed that sugar is bad for you as far as I'm aware. I haven't heard any of them pivot towards saying there are benefits from any meaningful intake of sugars.
