[derefr]

Why is it a problem if people can't understand the icons right now? The goal is to slap them on everything, everywhere, for decades. Complete, textual nutrition labels will continue existing where they already do. People will make the mental association when they're looking at their food packaging and see the two kinds of labels, with the same numbers between the two.

Is it a problem that the "floppy disk" symbol for saving documents is now meaningless, since floppy disks are dead? Kids who encounter the icon today, just learn the meaning by rote. To them, it's an opaque language element representing a concept—just like, say, Chinese characters. Humans turn out to be okay at just absorbing the associations of an opaque icon over time, without the icon needing to be specifically evocative (skeuomorphic) of anything. It just needs to be unique.

And re: "it needs to be rethought if it should be there at all"—consider, for example, individual-serving yoghurt snack tubes. What's in them? Who knows? The info is on the box, not on the tube. Can you "count calories" on a lunch containing one? Nope, not unless you wrote down the calories from the box when you were at home. Kind of annoying, no?

[azinman2]

Because these icons are for mcdonalds only. If magically they were universally adopted, then I'd agree. I seriously doubt they will, especially because they're not particularly clear as they currently stand.