The First Gift
When mankind and womankind first walked upright on planet Earth, our Maker gave them a unique gift. The first human beings to walk upright were ‘hunter-gatherers’. When the game was plentiful and the nuts and berries were ripe and in season they feasted and when the game was scarce and the natural foraging was slim, they endured period of famine.
So mankind and womankind was given a great gift called insulin. When food collection times are good, our blood sugar increases and insulin kicks in letting our bodies know to convert the extra sugars into fat and store them for the times of famine. Unfortunately we in North America and elsewhere don’t experience ‘famines’ that much anymore. So every day we convert our food intake into fats that get stored on our hips and around our waistlines.
However science had given us another gift to help us manage this item. In England, about 30 years ago, a scientist undertook to conduct some studies on foods effect on the body. He researched which foods cause our level of blood sugar to increase greatly and which foods had smaller effects on us. He found that some foods took up to 25% more energy to digest than others. This was all correlated to an index called the Glycemic Index (GI). The higher the number, the easier it was to convert that particular food to fat.
Foods like all-bran cereal, apples, carrots, chick peas, grapes, green peas, kidney beans, oranges, peaches, peanuts, pears, strawberries, and sweet corn have low Glycemic Indexes (GI). Foods like popcorn, watermelon, whole wheat flour bread, white wheat flour bread, sweetened cereal, linguine, macaroni, spaghetti, white rice, and baked russet potatoes have high Glycemic Index (GI).
Now this is not to suggest a specific diet plan or anything, but if you look at any diet plan book at the bookstore or at your library and they mention Glycemic Index then they are on the right track. The interesting thing about these books that use the Glycemic Index approach is that you can eat the same amount of food and still loose weight. So you get two gifts in one. First, you don’t feel hungry and secondly, you get the satisfaction of feeling like you have beaten the system. The system says you have to eat a great amount of highly processed foods, which are easily converted to fat, in order to feel satisfied.
The other gifts that mankind, in a way gave itself, was the herding instinct. By that I mean they thought that human beings should gather together for self-protection. Apparently when we were hunter-gatherers, there were lions and tigers that hunted us as well, and people who study those times suggest that humans may have gathered together and created an outside fence of thorn bushes to keep the nighttime predators away.
I imagine that one of the first gift that one human gave another was probably the gift of food. It may have been provided or given to encourage another human being to join the group for mutual self-protection. In fact Wikipedia describes gifts or presents as: ‘A gift or present is the transfer of money, goods, etc., without the direct compensation that is involved in trade, although possibly involving a social expectation of reciprocity, or a return in the form of prestige or power. In many human societies, the act of mutually exchanging gifts contributes to social cohesion.’
A gift can be an ordinary object that you have bought or made yourself. It may be an object created for the express purpose of gift exchange, such as those given at a gifting party, like a bridal or baby shower. It may be an alternative gift such as a donation to a charity in the name of the recipient. Lastly, perish the thought; it may be a re-gift of an unwanted gift previously received by the giver.
In the following articles, each one about a page long, we will explore the different types of gifts and gift giving. The purpose of these articles is to describe various gift-giving circumstances and allow you to decide which sort of gifts and occasions you feel comfortable with and fit into your individual style.