Who decides what kids eat at school? The answer is complicated, but one big piece of the puzzle is the US dietary guidelines, the nutritional recommendations released by the federal government every five years. Last week, the Obama Administration dropped the long-awaited guidelines, urging Americans to cut down on sugar.

Many of us don’t pay much attention to the recommendations, but they guide the food served to millions through federal programs for women, children, the elderly, and other vulnerable populations. And overall, they’ve remained relatively consistent for decades: Americans should eat more vegetables, whole grains, and fruits, and less saturated fat, sodium, and added sugars. The suggestion to cut back on sugar this year sticks out because it is so specific: Americans are to limit added sugar to more than ten percent of total daily calories. (In the past edition, Americans were simply encouraged to “reduce the intake” of added sugars.) For an American on a 2,000 calorie diet, ten percent means no more than 12 teaspoons a day—a dramatic drop from the 30 teaspoons consumed by many Americans.

The guidelines call for a pretty dramatic change—so can we expect school cafeterias to do a major sugar purge? Not necessarily—at least not any time soon.

For starters, senior USDA officials don’t expect the new guidelines to affect school lunches—no surprise, since sugar doesn’t tend to be a big problem for lunch. But school breakfast is a different story—think sugary cereal, flavored yogurt, and pastries. Waffles and pancakes often come prepared with added sugar so that schools don’t have to deal with messy maple syrup dispensers. The result is that school breakfasts often contain more than half of the recommended daily amount of sugar—and yet, currently, there are no sugar standards for school meals, says Margo Wootan, director of nutrition policy at Center for Science in the Public Interest.

Snacks at schools can also be super sweet—foods compliant with the current federal standards include cereal bars, chocolate chip cookies, and frozen yogurt. There are sugar standards for school snacks, but they’re relatively weak—foods are supposed to be no more than 35 percent sugar by weight. (The typical sugary cereal bar is, by weight, about a third sugar.)

But changing snacks and breakfasts so that they align with the latest guidelines would likely take years—and such a change would be far from automatic. First, the USDA would need to issue rules requiring schools to comply with the dietary guidelines, and then schools would need to be given time to implement the changes. Timing is tricky, since, over the past five years, schools have had to make dramatic changes to meals to comply with the Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act—which was passed in 2010 but not fully implemented until 2014. Many school nutrition directors weren’t great fans of those reforms—they resisted making meals healthier, claiming that kids won’t eat more wholesome food.