Ice Cream As Expected

Once upon a time, there was a famous chef who created a “crab-flavoured ice cream to accompany his popular crab risotto main dish.”  Unsurprisingly, the ice cream was not as popular as the main dish.  Apparently the ice cream actually tasted okay, but people had opinions about what a pink-colored ice cream should taste like.  Strawberry, maybe?  Certainly not crustacean.  They had a positive expectation and the reality felt negative by comparison.

That is a problem with opinions. They can be influenced by many things.  If you read about cognitive science like I do, you hear about this problem all the time.  I was just reading a book called, “Genuine Fakes, How Phony Things Teach Us About Real Stuff,” by Lydia Pyne.  And, yes, she describes the problem in a chapter about the history of artificial flavorings, including the story of our hapless chef above.  I think it applies to Long-Term Care activity programs, too.  Huh?

Folks entering LTC have preconceptions, expectations, about life going forward, the activities that will be available to them, and how they might relate to them.  In this case, I would say that the majority of expectations are of the negative sort.  I’m reminded of a cousin of mine who ranted about those places that “want to put a little party hat on your head.“  And frankly, I’m not a “little party hat” person myself.  You can call me “Honey” or “Sweetie” all day, but no little party hats, thank-you very much.

Back to the main point here, expectations, whether realistic or biased, affect our choices.  Would you like some crab-flavored ice cream?  Or better yet, “How important is it to you to do things with groups of people?”  Wait, do you mean nowadays or back in college, twenty years ago or when the kids were little, when I ran my own show or when I’ve had one fall too many and I’m suddenly in a strange place that our culture has taught me to dread?  As to the unusual dessert, Pyne states that, “Although the perception and expectation of flavour happens on an individual level, culture writ large facilitates our expectations of what we think something ‘ought’ to taste like.” (120)  I would hazard a guess that culture has a big influence on how folks answer the MDS because, like an old Star Trek episode, their preferences are lost somewhere in between several parallel universes.

So, what images are conjured up by the MDS questions?  Pyne describes how “people long for something to taste authentic, even if they’ve never had the ‘real’ or the ‘original’ flavour.” (120)  It’s a mental construct.  As are people’s “preferences.”  Because nothing we can provide in Long-Term Care will be exactly the same as the activities the person did or could have done or even imagined doing as a healthy, independent person with available time and energy in the context of the culture(s) they came from.

Pyne cites the research related to our original problem with opinions.  “In a series of experiments, psychologist Martin Yeomans has shown that it is possible to influence a person’s perception of liking a frozen pink dessert by simply telling them that it is savoury to begin with – or giving the food a different name.”  That’s just one item from a long list of things that can influence someone’s opinion.  Time of day is another.  In what order the questions are asked is another.  It might be as easy as this example that Pyne shared: “Research,” she says “has found that oysters taste better with the sound of the seashore playing in the background.” (119)

They taste better.  Same oysters – different answer.  What if we asked the MDS question about group participation with some happy laughter and applause in the background?

© Donna Stuart, ADC, MT      September 1, 2026

Pyne, L. (2019). Genuine Fakes, How Phony Things Teach Us About Real Stuff. London: Bloomsbury Sigma.

https://wisdomquotes.com/reality-quotes/  “We don’t see things as they are – we see them as we expect them to be.”  Adam Grant