Just nine days of cutting out fructose — the kind of sugar found in soft drinks, fruit juices and most processed foods — led to an unprecedented reduction in liver fat, a condition strongly linked to Type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease, a new Bay Area-based study shows.

Scientists at Touro University in Vallejo and UC San Francisco who recorded a 20 percent drop in liver fat in children and adolescents they studied say the results offer a strategy that could slow the soaring global increase in chronic metabolic diseases.

The findings appear in the journal Gastroenterology.

“Our study clearly shows that sugar is turned into fat, which may explain the epidemic of fatty liver in children consuming soda and food with added sugar. And we find that fatty liver is reversed by removing added fructose from our diet,” lead author Jean-Marc Schwarz, a professor at Touro University and UCSF, said in a statement.

The researchers said the prevalence of fatty liver disease in adolescents has more than doubled in the past 20 years and is thought to cause a number of disorders by increasing insulin resistance, which dampens the body’s ability to control blood sugar, leading to Type 2 diabetes and other metabolic diseases.

Studies show that sugar consumption among Latino and African-American teens is about 50 percent higher than that of whites and Asians, so the researchers recruited obese non-diabetic children and teens, ages 9 to 18, from those two ethnic groups. All the participants had at least one physiological marker for insulin resistance and all reported habitual high sugar consumption.

In the experimental diet, the calories from fructose were replaced by glucose-rich, starchy foods. Experts say glucose, found in grains and some vegetables, is the body’s main source of energy. It is essential for metabolism and can be turned into energy in all of our cells.

The researchers noted that a new model projecting the health and cost benefits of reducing sugar consumption in the U.S. found that a 20 percent drop in fructose consumption would cut the prevalence of a range of metabolic diseases by about 5 percent, saving the country $10 billion annually in medical costs.