There's nothing wrong with sugar when eaten as part of a meal, it's when people down Coca Cola on an empty stomach that there's a problem. And fat is actually essential to life.

At the risk of stating the obvious, when you eat a meal, all of it goes to the same place. So as long as the meal as a whole provides sufficient nutrition (and if you are eating a varied diet then it absolutely will do), no part of it can be described as "empty calories".

Continuing the trend of stating the obvious, it is absolutely possible to load food with too much sugar or fat that offers practically no marginal nutritional value. I say marginal because of course to a starving person the calories brought in by sugar are valuable, but probably not to a person who is generally able to get their calories from a wide range of sources and in general wants to control their caloric intake.

Empty calories is not a moral judgment. It is a statement of fact.

Bingo... I can't count how many restaurant meals I've eaten that could have been 500 calories, but have been unnecessarily inflated to 1500-2000 calories by adding butter/sugar/fat to improve the taste. I'm not saying fat is bad for you - far from it - good fats like avocado and olive oil are essential, but you can definitely tell that some restaurants (especially chains) have perfected the unhealthy sugar/fat/salt triad in order to maximize taste - this can't be good for you to eat every meal... (occasionally, go for it)