1st: they are NOT healthy. You just never eat berries in such amounts as you consume sugar in confectionery things.
2nd: there are many different types of sweet substances. Some are worse like sugar, others are safer like fructose.

There is sugar, absolutely. And that's probably where most of the calories come from. But there is also water, cellulose (fiber), and vitamins/minerals - doesn't have much non-sugar caloric value to change that balance, but it's still important. And nobody serious is suggesting you eat only fruit, so you can get non-sugar calories from other sources and it can be balanced in the big picture.

It's kind of like an appropriate amount of dressing on a salad, the good outweighs the bad and makes you more likely to actually eat that nutrition-positive food.

Source: I'm some guy on the Internet. You can trust me.

1/2 bottle of Ranch an appropriate amount?

What a shitty "bot".

Fructose is the element in sugar (Sucose) that actually taste sweet, it is also the part that is unhealthy. it acts somewhat like alcohol.
Giving similar problems and can also cause dependency.

If you want to know the basics about sugar I don't think there is much better info than this out there, absolutely worth a watch:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM

For the first half of the meal, yes.

Are you both from the US? It was rough getting used to how much you all like to drown out the food with various sauces

If I remember my highschool biology correctly (which I probably don't, so take this with all the grains of salt), natural sources like berries, fruits, etc... create natural glucose which is what every living organism (including us...use for energy). Meaning when we eat berries and fruit, that natural glucose doesn't need to be converted or processed in order for our body to make use of it. That also gives it a more stable effect in our system.

Refined sugars, on the other hand, need to be processed into glucose before it can bind to (oxygen? I think?) and pass into our bloodstream. That process leaves a lot of junk leftover which can have detrimental effects.

Again...I'm trying to remember a 35 year old highschool biology course, so correct me if I'm wrong.

It's called: "Fatland".

close but not quite

All carbohydrates have to be converted into glucose. Your breads, pastas, starches, etc

All forms of glucose can be used directly, without the conversion. But that does not make them healthier by any stretch

Glucose by itself tastes sweet

Glucose by itself is also very unhealthy

Whole fruits are a treat that can be tolerated by a healthy person in very moderate quantities. Think about the quantities you would get if you went out physically picking fruit off of a tree. So not a big bowl of easy to consume fruit from the grocery store, but when you put the physical effort in.... It's ok

There is no essential nutrition in fruit, historically, the role of fruit was as a fattening device before winter. An opportunistic caloric boon.

The biggest argument in favor of citrus fruits is there vitamin c. In the modern dietary context with really high blood glucose levels there is competition for the natural vitamin c pathway, the glut4 receptor. Citrus, by virtue of flooding the body of vitamin c, gets enough vitamin c into these cells and wins the competition with the blood glucose levels.

If a whole fruit offsets something worse you could eat, like a candy bar - then yes it is healthier then a candy bar, but it's also healthier then a cigarette. That doesn't tell us much about its essential levels of "health" in isolation.

Tldr: whole fruit is a sometimes treat, but it does not contribute to your health.

Because sugar isn't unhealthy in the first place, you'll die without any sugar.

Fructose is twice as sweet as Glucose, and while we do use Glucose for energy the same is not true for fructose, and fructose is way way more harmful.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweetness

Sure, but the fact remains that glucose is sweet.

Unless you have FLD the vast majority of metabolic damage is from persistently elevated blood glucose. There is no dietary requirement for exogenous glucose in our food.

So is 100g of fructose worse then 100g of glucose? Sure, but glucose is still quite bad and abundant in most people's diets.

I couldn't be more wrong if I tried

I'll grant you my position is unpopular, but I haven't seen any data indicating it is wrong.

People can, and have, lived long happy lives without any fruit.

Sugar: THE BITTER TRUTH

Robert H. Lustig, MD, UCSF Professor of Pediatrics in the Division of Endocrinology, explores the damage caused by sugary foods. He argues that fructose (too much) and fiber (not enough) appear to be cornerstones of the obesity epidemic through their effects on insulin. Recorded on 05/26/2009.

He is so well spoken, and his work is very impactful!

You won't die if you don't eat sugar