>That is why I conditioned the claim with the qualifier "in a modern diet".

What does this even mean?

People have very different diets and food habits across the world and I mean is similary developed nations.

Most people with healthy eating habbits will have problems with a tea spoon or two of sugar in their tea or coffee.

It is still wrong, though. Physical state and calorie expenditure are also very, very important context.

If your blood sugar is low, then eating/drinking stuff with a high glycemic index can be very good for you. For instance after heavy exercising.

You might think it is obvious, but people like simplistic things, so "sugar is bad for you, mmkay" is what most people believe nowadays rather than having a basic understanding of such fairly simple aspects of nutrition.

To the overwhelming majority of humans who do not have a super heavy physical activity, it is bad.

It’s just bad in general. Yes, there are corner case, like athletes, where in moderate quantities it is useful.

Nope, still bullshit. The world does not consist of Americans. For billions of people it is very very easy to get their body into a low blood glucose state. No 'super heavy physical activity' required.

Don't get me wrong: In most of those cases eating something else would be better, but that does not make sugar 'bad in general'. Nutrition discourse does not benefit from such bad and misleading vilifications and simplifications. It causes people to think in 'silver bullets' and distrust science and government when that silver bullet turns out not to work.

> In most of those cases eating something else would be better

Ok, let’s say “worse than other foods” then, if you dislike the word “bad”.

I don't "dislike the word bad". It simply does not apply here and is semantically different from "worse than". One is relative and the other (subjectively) absolute.

Getting hit on the foot with a sledgehammer is bad for you. But it's better than getting hit in the head with a sledgehammer. Using "better than" here does not make the former good for you, however.

That's how language works. It is important to be precise, for earlier mentioned reasons.

So we agree there is no contradiction, it can be “bad“ and “worse than” at the same time.

My point was, I do not see a contradiction between the two, hence I do not understand why you are stating is cannot be “bad”.

"Not as goods" and "bad" are two different things.

White meat is not as good as an egg. It "bad" too by this logic.

I think what I mean by "bad" is that removing sugar (or at least food with added sugar) is like a low-hanging fruit on the road to a better diet.

White bread is not too far away from sugar, like alcohol, actually. Replacing white bread with something full grain would also be something "good" for your diet – although in some places it's really hard to find full grain bread that doesn't taste like parchment, so maybe a not-so-low-hanging fruit ;)

Finally, I think I am compounding the refined sugar and the sugar lobby itself, who has been pushing for decades that what is bad for health is fat, whereas study after study proved otherwise.