How long does it take for health benefits to kick in from cutting sugar in the diet? A new study of obese children suggests improvements are evident in just 10 days.

The study, financed by the National Institutes of Health and published in the journal Obesity, found kids who cut back on their sugar intake see improvements in their blood pressure, cholesterol readings, and other markers of health within days, The New York Times reports.

The new research suggests sugar itself harms health, not just the weight gain that comes from consuming sugary drinks and foods, said lead researcher Dr. Robert Lustig, a pediatric endocrinologist at the Benioff Children’s Hospital of the University of California, San Francisco.

“This paper says we can turn a child’s metabolic health around in 10 days without changing calories and without changing weight – just by taking the added sugars out of their diet,” he said. “From a clinical standpoint, from a health care standpoint, that’s very important.”

Added sugars are a topic of growing debate. This year, the federal government’s Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee recommended that Americans limit their intake of added sugars to no more than 10 percent of daily calories.