One meal challenge!

Ramadan of the Prophet ﷺ — The One Meal Challenge

What did the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ eat in Ramadan? What food did he consume? Because for you and me, as the month draws near, that is the first thing on our mind. Because for many of us, Ramadan is a month of feasting, not a month of fasting. It's not the month of i'tikaf, it's the month of eatikaf.

I thought about that one all by myself. Ramadan has become a feasting festival. A month in which we meet lots of people, we eat, we fill our bellies, we get too exhausted for taraweeh.

The Prophet's ﷺ Diet

The Prophet ﷺ, his norm when it came to eating, was that nothing would be cooked in his house for months on end. What did he live on? Anybody know what was the main staple diet of the Prophet ﷺ? Al-Aswadān — dates and water. The Ramadan of the Prophet ﷺ — food and feasting was not a part of it.

The family of Muhammad ﷺ never ate their fill of barley bread on two consecutive days until he passed away. (Sahih al-Bukhari, Hadith 5416)

The One Meal Challenge

But feasting is a part of our Ramadan. So there's a challenge I give all of you — especially the fathers, and especially the heads of the household. It's called the One Meal Challenge.

Every day in Ramadan, for iftar, try not to have more than one meal prepared. One rice dish, one curry, one whatever dish — pasta, whatever. One dish.

Because what happens when you have 16 dishes on the table? Who spends the vast majority of the time cooking in the kitchen rather than worshipping Allah? All the focus, all the emphasis, becomes the food.

When we learn about the Prophet's ﷺ Ramadan, food is not even mentioned. What did he eat? Where did he eat? Because it was not even a point of concern for him.

But for us, it's the first point of concern.