An astonishing new study indicates that consuming more cinnamon can speed up your metabolism and help you lose weight. The findings, which were published in the journal Metabolism, pinpointed an essential oil called cinnamaldehyde that gives cinnamon its flavor and could be an additional tool in the fight against obesity.

Cinnamaldehyde works by acting against fat cells called adipocytes, prompting a process called thermogenesis that burns energy. Scientists discovered that when cinnamaldehyde was applied to human cells, there was an increase in activity of the metabolic proteins Ucp1 and Fgf21.

Obviously, it doesn’t mean you can replace healthy eating with a dose of cinnamon, but if you’ve been struggling to lose weight this may be a good way to provide an extra kick to your metabolism that, combined with diet and exercise, could help you shed those pounds.

“Scientists were finding that this compound affected metabolism,” said Jun Wu, research assistant professor at the University of Michigan Life Sciences Institute. “So we wanted to figure out how—what pathway might be involved, what it looked like in mice and what it looked like in human cells.”