7-Day Mediterranean Diet Meal Plan and Shopping List
A 7-day Mediterranean diet meal plan with breakfasts, lunches, dinners and snacks, plus a complete shopping list ordered by supermarket aisle and easy swaps.
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Here is a complete seven-day Mediterranean plan with breakfast, lunch, dinner and a snack for each day, followed by the whole shop written out aisle by aisle so you can walk the store once. It leans on tinned fish, lentils, bulgur, eggs and a roast chicken, and it uses each dinner twice on purpose.
The week at a glance
| Day | Breakfast | Lunch | Dinner |
|---|---|---|---|
| Monday | Overnight oats: rolled oats soaked in milk with a spoon of Greek yogurt, grated apple, cinnamon and chopped walnuts | White bean and tuna salad: tinned cannellini and tinned tuna with red onion, parsley, lemon and olive oil, piled on spinach with wholegrain bread | Sheet-pan chicken thighs with lemon, dried oregano, potatoes, red onion and bell peppers, roasted in one tray; cucumber and tomato salad |
| Tuesday | Wholegrain toast rubbed with a halved tomato and olive oil, salt over the top, plus a boiled egg | Leftover chicken shredded into wholegrain pita with cucumber, yogurt thinned with lemon, and mint | Lentil soup: brown lentils with onion, carrot, celery, tinned tomatoes and a bay leaf, finished off the heat with olive oil and lemon; bread alongside |
| Wednesday | Greek yogurt with orange segments, walnuts and a thread of honey | Leftover lentil soup with a tomato and feta salad, dried oregano and olive oil | Cod fillets baked over cherry tomatoes, olives, capers and sliced garlic; bulgur alongside; green beans with lemon |
| Thursday | The second jar of overnight oats, made on Monday | Bulgur salad: leftover bulgur with chickpeas, cucumber, tomato, parsley, mint, lemon, olive oil and crumbled feta | Spaghetti with tinned tomatoes, garlic and chilli flakes, tinned sardines flaked through at the end with olives and parsley; green salad |
| Friday | Eggs scrambled with frozen spinach, squeezed dry, and chopped tomato, on wholegrain toast | The rest of the bulgur and chickpea salad, with extra leaves | Salmon fillets roasted with sliced fennel, red onion and orange; roast potatoes from the same oven; broccoli with lemon |
| Saturday | Eggs baked in a tomato and pepper sauce with cumin and paprika, bread to mop the pan | Mezze plate: hummus, olives, feta, tomatoes, cucumber, wholegrain pita and any roast vegetables left in the fridge | Eggplant halves baked with a filling of tomato, onion and garlic, a little hard cheese grated over; rice or leftover bulgur; green salad |
| Sunday | Greek yogurt with grapes, a pear and a spoon of mixed seeds | Leftover baked eggplant with a fried egg on top and bread | Roast chicken with lemon, garlic and potatoes; a large salad. Keep the leftover meat for Monday and the carcass for stock |
Snacks
Pick one or two a day, or none. There is no requirement to snack.
- An orange or an apple with a small handful of almonds.
- Greek yogurt with honey.
- Hummus with carrot and cucumber sticks.
- Olives and a few cubes of feta.
- A pear and a few walnuts.
Fish lands four times: tuna Monday, cod Wednesday, sardines Thursday, salmon Friday. That clears the twice-weekly floor described by the Harvard Nutrition Source and Oldways, and sits inside the two-to-three-times-a-week framing the Mayo Clinic Diet uses. Red meat does not appear at all. Olive oil is the only fat used for cooking and dressing, which is the substitution Harvard and the American Heart Association both describe: it replaces butter rather than joining it.
The shopping list, by aisle
This covers every meal above for two people, snacks included. Halve the fresh produce for one and leave the tins and dried goods alone, since they carry into next week. Quantities are loose on purpose — a bunch, a bag, a punnet — because that is how these things are sold.
Produce
| Item | Roughly how much | Used for |
|---|---|---|
| Lemons | 5 or 6 | Almost everything, every day |
| Garlic | 2 heads | Fish, soup, pasta, eggplant, roast chicken |
| Yellow onions | 3 | Soup, tomato sauce, eggplant filling |
| Red onions | 2 | Traybake, salads, salmon tray |
| Potatoes | A medium bag | Monday traybake, Friday roast, Sunday roast |
| Carrots | A small bag | Lentil soup, snack sticks |
| Celery | 1 head | Lentil soup |
| Fennel | 1 bulb | Roasted with the salmon |
| Red bell peppers | 3 | Traybake, Saturday tomato and pepper sauce |
| Cherry tomatoes | 2 punnets | Baked cod, salads |
| Large tomatoes | 5 or 6 | Toast, salads, eggplant filling |
| Cucumbers | 3 | Salads, pita, snack sticks |
| Eggplant | 2 | Saturday dinner |
| Broccoli | 1 head | Friday |
| Green beans | A handful, loose or bagged | Wednesday |
| Baby spinach | A bag | Monday lunch, salad leaves |
| Salad leaves or romaine | 2 heads | Thursday, Saturday, Sunday |
| Flat-leaf parsley | 1 large bunch | Fish, salads, pasta |
| Mint | 1 bunch | Pita filling, bulgur salad |
| Apples | 2 | Overnight oats, snacks |
| Pears | 2 | Snacks, Sunday breakfast |
| Oranges | 4 or 5 | Breakfast, salmon tray, snacks |
| Grapes | A bunch | Sunday breakfast, snacks |
Pantry and tinned
- Extra-virgin olive oil — one everyday bottle for cooking, one better bottle for finishing. If you buy only one, make it the everyday one. An everyday olive oil worth cooking with touches every meal here.
- Tinned chopped tomatoes, 3 tins.
- Tinned cannellini or other white beans, 2 tins.
- Tinned chickpeas, 2 tins.
- Tinned tuna in olive oil, 3 tins.
- Tinned sardines, 2 tins.
- Olives, one jar — kalamata or green, whichever you actually like.
- Capers, a small jar.
- Dried brown or green lentils, a bag.
- Bulgur wheat, a bag.
- Rolled oats, a bag.
- Wholegrain spaghetti, one packet.
- Rice, a small bag, if you are not using leftover bulgur on Saturday.
- Walnuts and almonds.
- Mixed seeds — pumpkin and sunflower.
- Honey.
- Red wine vinegar.
- Tahini, if you are making your own hummus rather than buying it.
- Dried oregano, bay leaves, chilli flakes, ground cumin, sweet paprika, black pepper, flaky salt.
Chilled
- Greek yogurt, one large tub. It does breakfast, sauce and snacks.
- Feta, a block in brine rather than pre-crumbled.
- Eggs, a dozen.
- Milk, dairy or otherwise, for the overnight oats.
- A small piece of hard cheese for grating over Saturday's eggplant.
- Hummus, one tub, unless you are making it.
- Bone-in chicken thighs, a pack of six to eight.
- A whole chicken for Sunday.
- Cod or hake fillets, 2.
- Salmon fillets, 2.
Freezer
- Frozen spinach — for Friday's eggs, and it keeps for months.
- Frozen peas — not in the plan, but the fastest vegetable you will ever own.
- Frozen berries — an alternative to fresh fruit in yogurt.
- Frozen white fish, if fresh cod is not worth the price this week. It bakes from frozen with the tomatoes and olives quite happily.
Bakery
- One wholegrain loaf.
- One pack of wholegrain pita.
The full grocery list is the general version for any week you build yourself, and the pantry staples page covers what should live in the cupboard permanently.
Which days lean on leftovers
Only four days involve real cooking. Everything else is assembly.
- Sunday before the week starts: the lentil soup, the bulgur, a tray of roast vegetables and a jar of lemon and olive oil dressing. About ninety minutes, with the oven doing most of it.
- Monday cooks the traybake and feeds Tuesday lunch.
- Tuesday reheats soup and feeds Wednesday lunch.
- Wednesday is fifteen minutes of fish over bulgur that already exists.
- Thursday is a twenty-minute pasta; lunch was made Wednesday night.
- Friday is one tray in the oven.
- Saturday bakes the eggplant and feeds Sunday lunch.
- Sunday roasts a chicken that feeds the Monday after.
The order matters more than the recipes. The meal prep guide covers the cooking sequence, including which pot to start first.
Swaps
If you will not eat fish. Roast chickpeas with Wednesday's tomatoes, olives and capers. Stir white beans into Thursday's tomato sauce instead of sardines. Put a cauliflower, cut in thick slabs, on Friday's tray with the fennel and orange. You lose the seafood frequency Harvard and Oldways describe, so lean harder on legumes and eggs.
If you have no time. Cut to three cooking nights — the traybake, the soup and the pasta — and fill the rest with tinned fish on toast with tomatoes, an omelette with whatever is in the drawer, a mezze plate, and a jacket potato with beans and olive oil.
If the budget is tight. Use frozen white fish and a second tin of sardines in place of the cod and salmon, cook the lentils and chickpeas from dried, and buy whatever vegetable is stacked cheapest instead of the fennel and green beans. The budget page goes much further on this.
If you eat no meat. Swap Monday's chicken for halloumi or thick slices of eggplant on the same tray, and Sunday's roast for stuffed peppers with rice, pine nuts and herbs. Lunches were already meat-free apart from Tuesday's pita, which works with hummus and roast vegetables.
If you cook for children. Serve the components unmixed — the same bulgur, chickpeas, cucumber and feta in separate piles is an easier sell than the same things in a bowl.
A few honest notes
What makes this work is the Sunday session and having somewhere to put what you cooked; four matching glass containers with lids that actually fit do more for consistency than any recipe, and a proper pantry restock is worth doing once rather than drifting into it — the pantry staples page lists what earns its shelf. The week itself, the shopping list and the swaps are all in the free printable plan.
MedlinePlus notes that eating less dairy than you used to can mean less calcium in the day. The yogurt here is partly for that reason; if you drop it, think about what replaces it. And if you have a diagnosed condition, are pregnant, take medication or manage allergies, talk to someone who knows your history rather than following a plan off a page — see our medical disclaimer.
When you want more than a week, the main meal plan page explains the system this week was built from, and the 30-day plan stretches it across four weeks without asking you to cook thirty different things.
Questions people ask
How much of this can I cook in advance?
Four things: the lentil soup, the bulgur, the roast vegetables and the dressing. Cook those on Sunday and no weeknight meal takes more than about twenty minutes from a cold start.
What if I only cook for one?
Keep the plan and halve the fresh produce, not the tins or dried goods. The leftover structure works even better for one person, since each dinner covers a lunch the next day rather than needing to be doubled.
Can I move the days around?
Yes, with one caveat. Cook the fresh fish within a couple of days of shopping and push the tinned-fish and legume meals to the end of the week. Everything else can slide.
Is one week enough to know if this suits me?
It is enough to learn whether the shopping and cooking rhythm fits your life, which is the part that decides whether anyone keeps going. If the week works, the 30-day plan is the same idea stretched over four weeks.
Do I need to count anything?
No counting here. The plan works on frequencies and proportions rather than numbers, and any figure worth quoting is attributed on our main plan page to the body that published it.
Keep going
- Mediterranean Diet Meal Plan: A Full Week, Built Simply
A full Mediterranean diet meal plan: a sample week of breakfasts, lunches and dinners, the frequencies the major sources give, and how to build your own.
- Mediterranean Diet Grocery List: A Starter and Weekly Shop
A Mediterranean diet grocery list organised by supermarket aisle, split into the one-off starter shop you build once and the short weekly shop you rebuy.
- Mediterranean Diet Meal Prep: Components, Not Full Meals
Prep components instead of finished meals: a grain, a pot of beans, roast vegetables, two sauces. Then build a different Mediterranean plate in five minutes.
Back to Mediterranean meal plans.
This page is general information about food and cooking, not medical or dietetic advice. Read the full disclaimer.