>but my understanding is that while being diabetic means that overconsuming sugar will be bad because your body can't regulate blood sugar, a non-diabetic person consuming copious amounts of sugar will not directly cause them to develop diabetes.
Again that’s the industry playing words games and being disingenuous.
There are sugars that are processed by the liver and then sugar that can’t be processed by the liver, which are released into the blood triggering an insulin response. That distinction in sugars like the type1/type2 distinction allows the industry to make broad claims to muddy the waters.
Sure if you only consumer sugars processed in the liver you won’t develop type 2 (of course you will likely have non alcoholic fatty liver disease). On the other hand the sugar that is released into the blood triggering insulin is the sugar that if removed from diet can prevent 100% of type 2 diabeties.
Your observation that people who don’t smoke still get cancer is obviously true, but on the flip people who do not consume sugars that cause insulin spikes will not develop type 2. So now Imagine if preventing cancer were as simple as saying if you stop consuming x you will not develop cancer, but a bunch of FUD saying x doesn’t cause cancer (that may be technically correct but the much larger issue is don’t consume x and you won’t develop y). I’m all for the progress of science and all for the continued study, in the meantime though if we want people (especially children) to stop getting y they should immediately stop consuming x, until science provides further insight allow the consumption of x without getting y.