pastries also have fat though and parent was talking about enjoyment per kcal.

Fat is good for you, as long as it isn’t trans-fat. The common wisdom around cholesterol is false (the ”lipid hypothesis” is just that, a hypothesis).

Excess calories are bad for you, no matter what form they come in.

Very true. However, consuming oils and fats make one more quickly satiated compared to sugars and other carbohydrates, leading to less overall consumption of calories.

This depends if you consider all carbohydrates to be sugar or not. At the end of the day, the refined flours in the pastry are also sugar-equivalent.

>In most cases you could eat multiple pastries and still have significantly less sugar than a soda.

yep. The can of soda has something like 10 spoons of sugar. In that volume i stop feeling the difference after 2nd-3rd spoon of sugar. I do drink soda - by diluting it about 1:5. For the pastries and other bakery products - it does depends where it comes from. The standard American bakery sill puts a lot of sugar into pastries, cakes, bread (especially the fast-rise), etc. while some of the ones trying to do European style do use sugar more moderately (they also usually use more fat like butter thus making the taste better, more balanced, and probably also thus more healthy - my personal impression/opinion - as the more balanced content (fat/carbs vs. low-fat-high-sugar approach somehow more popular in the American bakery) seems to me to be better).