That sugar however is produced by the body itself.
Technically speaking, dietary requirement for sugar is 0. This doesn't mean it isn't useful to have some, but it definitely shouldn't be the basis of the food pyramid.
Staples, but eaten in very small quantity, at least in France. As for Italy, Italians actually have massive problems with obesity, especially in children, precisely due to their consumption of bread and pasta. Traditional Italian diet is massive on vegetables, fruit and meat (fish and pork in particular), with bread and pasta being basically side dishes. But that is not what Italians are eating now, and so they've gotten sick as well.
It is not just issue of raw calories but how much body can absorb. Fruitarians for example tend to be corpse-skinny despite fruit being full of sugar, because most of that sugar simply passes through. So effective calories are less than what sugar content would indicate.
But grains and seeds do seem to be quite obesogenic, yes.
Well, yeah, I have no problem with carbs from fruit so long as they aren't causing issues (which to me they do, but that is a me problem, not a general indication).
There is literally no proof for any of that. In fact, scientists recently seem to be walking back on the whole "saturated fat bad" stuff. Because nutritional science is less science, and more "monetary interests + blind faith".
While what you say is true, starch is still nutritionally unnecessary. And wheat in particular has a lot of unhealthy or even outright toxic substances in it, especially if you are talking about the whole wheat.
Carbohydrates do cause insulin resistance and diabetes. India has average BMI of 21,9, yet has very high incidence of diabetes - largely thanks to its carbohydrate-based diet.
No, they are not. Dietary cholesterol has little to zero impact on blood cholesterol, and saturated fat we don't have reliable data that points to it being harmful either, when accounting for other influences.
I have IBS, and what I did was literally that I kept a list of foods and symptoms they cause me.
Turns out, carbohydrate-rich foods cause me massive issues, too much protein causes me some issues. Saturated fat is the least damaging to my gut health, followed my monounsaturated fats. Polyunsaturated fats and carbohydrates are the devil I have to avoid, no questions asked.
Also, red meat isn't a known carcinogen. Processed meat is. And plaque formation in arteries is a consequence of inflammation... which is caused by sugar, a.k.a. carbohydrates. Insulin resistance is also a consequence of increased carbohydrate consumption.
But as I said, it is a combination of fats and carbs that is the worst killed. Eliminating either one of those from the diet leads to an automatic improvement.
It is definitely not protein. I tried carnivore diet for a while (had massive issues tolerating carbs lol), and the higher my protein intake was, more hungry I felt. Reducing protein and increasing fat also increased satiety.
Turns out, it is fats that produce satiety signals, and the effect seems to be by far the strongest with saturated fats, weaker with monounsaturated fats, while polyunsaturated fats actually induce hunger as strongly or even more strongly than carbohydrates do. The idea that "protein induces satiety" is a side effect of the fact that most (though not all) protein foods tend to be quite fatty.
From what I have gathered (through research and by using myself as a guinea pig), there are two things about highly processed food that promote overeating:
1) high carbohydrate content
2) lack of nutrients
High carbohydrate content causes sugar spikes, which leads to insulin spikes, and insulin spikes both a) cause hunger and b) promote storage of energy in the form of body fat:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/3894001/
Second issue is as I said lack of nutrients. Your body needs nutrients, and will force you to eat until nutritional requirements had been satisfied. Since processed foods have very few nutrients, your organism compensates by increasing dietary intake... which means increasing caloric intake.
From what I've managed to find in the newest research, it apppears that diet does not appear to have any impact on atherosclerosis itself. But, as they say, more data needed.