Rashid Al-Fouzan Al-Riyadh A Big Saudi businessman who owns a chain of supermarkets once told me that the Saudis eat with their eyes, not with their mouth. He said about 40 percent of the food on the table will go to the garbage bin. We have turned Ramadan, the month of worship, blessing and charity, into an occasion for purchases. Families will gather in large numbers before the advent of Ramadan to buy their necessities for the fasting month. But what is the difference between foodstuffs for Ramadan and for the other months? I am not calling for a ban on the hectic purchases being made every year before the arrival of the fasting month. People will go into a mad buying spree to collect everything even if they do not need them. They just want to see their fridges and storehouses loaded with the things that they may need during Ramadan. Some unofficial studies estimated Ramadan purchases in the Kingdom to be about SR25 billion, which is equivalent to the budget of a neighboring country. When we take into account that our population is 21 million (give or take) we will discover that the monthly spending a person on food and drinks is SR1,190, which is a high figure especially when we know that this amount of money is only spent on food and drink. We do not have statistics for the fast food consumption but they cannot be less than 50 percent. It is not only the single men or women who are fond of consuming junk food but families too. It seems that people have forgotten the delicious taste of home-cooked food and are now going toward fast food. What about travel? Instead of planning before the start of the school summer vacation, we delay our flight reservations till the last moment, when ticket prices will go up. At the beginning of every school year we are mad about buying stationery for our sons and daughters. When you see Saudis buying school stationery, you may come to think that the stationery stores would remain closed for the rest of the year and that if people do not buy for their children now, they would never be able to do so. Rice is our main dish. A famous rice merchant told me that a Saudi individual would consume 50 kilograms of rice in a year. The merchant was surprised that about 40 percent of the rice cooked for social events such as weddings or feasts is wasted. People tend to buy large quantities of rice only to boast about their purchases. They have no consideration for their real food need or actual consumption. This is part of our consumption habits. People will ask you: How many rice sacks have you bought? How many T.V. sets do you have at home? How much money do you have in the bank? I wish that the Saudi people would realize that their human worth is not calculated by how much they have bought or how much they have stacked away. People should buy what they actually need. They should know how to plan their budgets for Ramadan, Eid, school year, summer vacation and other events. We should also learn to buy early and not to insist on a certain commodity to which we are accustomed. There is a large variety of goods now from which we can choose instead of depending on a certain commodity. We should not, at best, waste more than 2 percent of our food. Almighty Allah and the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) have strongly warned us against extravagance. We should be moderate in what we buy and what we eat.
