Vinegar + sweetener is the or a fundamental flavor in a number of things, including barbecue sauce, ketchup, coleslaw dressing, several salad dressings, some pasta sauce and chili-type sauces, cocktail sauce, some pickles, and so on.
By that I do not mean "those evil bastards are sticking sugar everywhere", I mean that this is a standard culinary technique. It may be overused and we may consume too much of it, but it is an old technique. It is also one of the answers to the question "how can so much sugar be everywhere but not everything tastes sweet?" Vinegar is one of the bigger answers to that question. (Even ignoring the fact that we can end up very adjusted to the sugar flavor, it is still amazing to me that some things can literally be half sugar by mass and not taste sweet.)
I also mention it because if you want to cut sugar out of your life, this is definitely one of the easiest places to miss a significant quantity. It's pretty easy to make yourself a great salad and accidentally slather it in vinegared sugar.
Yes, but the "traditional" sweetener in Italian pasta sauce is usually carrot, not processed white sugar. At least that's how I've always made pasta sauce.
