Sugar is in almost everything, though. It's going to be wild navigating through which foods have it and which don't. I'm curious if anybody has gone through with this.
Same with salt, there's no way to remove it, you can only try to confine it. But pretty much yes, it'll help. According to latest trends I heard, eating less is not as helpful as eating the right combinations, amounts and times, which is also quite impossible to integrate within your average day. Like eating five times during the day, each portion worth about 300 calories? Who can maintain such a discipline, right? Sure, a severely religious moslem perhaps... so, no dice.
Talking about restraining other less heathy things: switch to spring water, limit purines and saturates, throw out any fried/roasted food out of your diet, replace it with steamed/stewed cooking. The latter is in my opinion very important. I always laugh at people who don't eat meat, but fry their vegetables, and everything else for that matter, with sunflower oil or worse. Use a thought-out mix of spices to give you a good punch without using salt, like chili etc.
Anyway, to make it short: removing is not an option, but restraining is still worth it.
PS I almost forgot, switch from beer to red wine. Something tells me that a french version of LoneSage (aka SageSolitaire) could outlive us all...