Every Saturday in your inbox, you'll find a healthy Mediterranean diet meal plan that has you covered for an entire day of eating the Mediterranean way from breakfast to dinner. It also includes one featured recipe, shopping list, journal tracker, handy tips and resources to customize your menu.

The healthy menu meal plan introduces you to breakfasts, lunches, dinners and snacks all based on the guidelines of the Mediterranean diet so that you can master this healthy way of eating. It's a day filled with mostly plant-based meals that you should be able to pull together from what's already in your pantry. But the shopping list will have you covered just in case you’re missing something.

And along with the Mediterranean diet meal plan and the recipe and the shopping list and tips, I'll make sure you have what you need to customize it to your own healthy goals with a full macronutrient resource and a journal tracker.

Each menu is based on a 2000-calorie plan, but every meal is itemized so that you can trim or add to personalize it to what your target is - whether that's weight loss, managing diabetes or maintaining a healthy heart.

what do you get with a subscription?

Paid subscribers receive an exclusive Mediterranean diet meal plan every Saturday including one featured recipe, shopping list, journal tracker page and handy tips; and unlimited access to the full printable archive of all my Healthy Guides, Recipes and video lessons.

Unpaid subscribers receive a Mediterranean diet meal plan once monthly (on the first Saturday of the month), and free previews of the new recipes every other Saturday; full access to the Healthy Guides and limited access to Recipes from the archive.

how’d I get here?

Mediterranean Minutes is written by me, Caroline J. Beck, author of Every Day Mediterranean: a 30-Day Kick Start Plan, successful YouTuber, recipe developer and a big believer in the incredibly healthy Mediterranean way to eat every day known as the Mediterranean diet.

By the age of 6, there was early evidence that food would play an important role in my life. Practicing penmanship and kitchen creativity, I co-authored my first recipe, “Ham Slam”, with one of my older siblings. It had all the makings of a classic 1960’s American kitchen treasure, featuring gourmet ingredients like Campbell’s Cream of Celery soup and Durkee’s canned French Fried Onion Rings. It’s no wonder my culinary career promptly took a diversion until around the age of 40.

But spending years as an executive with brands such as Apple, Microsoft, and Sony Pictures didn’t snuff out my lifelong passion for travel, food, and wine. I eventually found my way back to my culinary roots when I turned my attention to studying technique at Cordon Bleu Paris and studying nutritional science at Stanford University's Medical Center for Health Education.

I found that my passion was less about using fancy ingredients in complicated recipes and more about turning ordinary ingredients (healthy) to extraordinary dishes (still healthy). Following that thought put me and my partner George on a plane to the Mediterranean seaside city of Alicante Spain in 2014 where we have lived ever since. It's been the best place I could possibly be to study the healthiest diet in the world.

And this newsletter is the best place I can be to share what I’ve learned about how to eat the Mediterranean way every day to help you on your own healthy journey.

is this for you?

I can’t tell you how many subscribers to my YouTube channel tell me that the Mediterranean diet has been recommended to them by their doctor, nutritionist or best friend, but they don’t know where to begin. If this sounds like you, then my newsletter just might be what you’re looking for.

I’ve created this newsletter to help anybody struggling with health issues that might be helped by what you eat. If you’ve read about it, been told about it or been “prescribed” the Mediterranean diet, this is the place to find easy-to-follow meal plans, a whole bunch of tasty, healthy recipes and reliable, science-backed guides filled with practical tips to help you make sense of this new healthy way of eating. In other words, all the basic information you’re gonna want to study up on to master your new way of eating.

where should I start?

Go ahead and download the Healthy Guides, glue some of them to the fridge! And wander around the Recipes archive to wet your appetite for the wonderfully healthy way of eating that’s in store when you become a paid subscriber. The archive holds every recipe that I've published categorized by meal type. And if you want to test drive a recipe or two, I’ve unlocked a few of my favorites so that you can see just how easy it is to eat the Mediterranean way every day.

what makes this newsletter different from other diet-based newsletters?

There are plenty of recipe newsletters out there, but this is not one of them. Sure, you’ll find hundreds of healthy recipes on Mediterranean Minutes with printable PDFs and video lessons (that feature alone sets me apart from most Substack newsletters) and plenty more being added every week, BUT that’s just part of the support you need to succeed.

This newsletter is created to help you learn to follow the Mediterranean diet with a full day’s menu each week so that you can reach your own healthy goals and keep track of them with the included Journal Tracker page.

The Healthy Guides cover many of the basics, other posts fill in with details about some of the most important features of this diet, and every week, you’ll find more tips & tricks to help you customize it to your personal nutritional needs.

So if this sounds like what you are looking for, I’d be honored if you’d join me on this healthy road trip to eat the Mediterranean way every day.

Note: If you do subscribe and don’t get a newsletter, please check in your spam folder as sometimes they go in there. If your email provider has a spam filter, please add mediterraneanminutes@substack.com to your safe list to make sure they arrive in your Inbox.