Well, if you're just eating meats and some greens, that probably puts you into a ketogenic state, which causes a lot of weirdness you'd need a researcher to properly explain.
But generally, yes. Ignoring amino acids and micronutrients, ignoring that certain types of foods require more energy to digest, if healthy meal X has 650 calories in it, the body will get the same energy from 650 calories of sweet tea.
Difference there is satiation. A meal of 9 oz turkey breast, 1/2 cup of oats, 6 oz blackberries and a stalk of broccoli would leave most people feeling pretty full for a while. An equivalent caloric amount of Snapple may make you feel bloated, but you're going to be as hungry as if you've eaten nothing in about 20 minutes. The person who drinks all those empty calories from Snapple is going to feel like they need to eat a meal pretty soon, even though, for the purpose of the metabolism, they already had one.
That's how empty calories and calorie-dense foods make people fat without them ever realizing what's going on. They don't feel like they're overeating, but "how much energy you ingested" vs "how much energy it feels like you ingested" are not nearly as closely-related as it would be assumed they would be.