The Mediterranean Diet for Beginners: The Complete Guide - 40 Delicious Recipes, 7-Day Diet Meal Plan, and 10 Tips for Success

Fantastic explanation of the Mediterranean diet, with beginners menus and recipes to get you on your way to a successful healthy way of eating.

I bought this book thinking I wouldn't look at it but there's only 40 recipes and I will probably make every one of them, they are easy there's not weird items that I have to go to another country and buy and they taste good. I might actually stick to the Mediterranean diet because of this. As time goes on I'll get bigger books but hopefully the recipes are as easy as this.

Another good book. I will not say it is a good read because that's not the intent of the author. It is a life style change and how to get there. Our society has become so saturated with fast food and fast fat. We eat like a bunch of hogs at a trough. Just look around while driving on the highway. People eating hamburgers and fries while driving. Drinking milk shakes and soda pop like there won't be any left tomorrow. We have the highest national average for weight related disease in all history. Diabetes is running ramped. One day I stopped to look at my naked body in the mirror and was near the edge of vomiting by what I saw. MAN! Who was that fat guy looking back at me? All at once I realized the people I had been hearing about in the news and online? Yeah, it was me they were talking about. I'm so dumb I went through two bouts of cancer before I woke up. That's when I began to really look for the correct way to lose weight and stay fit. I had heard about this diet... well really it is a diet only in the way you learn to change your eating habits. It is a life style change and the way it's written is custom made for the average American who has never been able to understand why he can't loose weight and feel better. It explains how certain foods effect you and why others are good for you. The Author has lived this diet his entire life and relates many of the foods and stories about them to his childhood when his mother made their family meals. He's a Dr and his views are founded on factual information not the latest fad diet like cutting out carbohydrates or some other silly fad diet. Learn to eat healthy and smart. Yes, it is a good book. If you read it and work it you will learn to control yourself and eat the right foods. You'll feel better and look better. Who knows?.......You might avoid the cancer thing like I failed to do!

I think this book can be summed up as: "Eat Rabbit Food And Be Healthy". The diet is to eat mostly vegetables and fruits, some nuts, beans, and olive oil. And to a lesser degree whole grains, fish, and poultry. There, that's the diet. So now that I've summed up the 70 page book in one sentence, is there any point in buying the book? Maybe. The book contains one week worth of suggested breakfasts, lunches, afternoon snacks, dinners, and deserts. I did find those somewhat useful, but maybe a tad unrealistic (for me anyway). For example: Monday Lunch: Garden Salad with whole grain roll. Ok, nobody would deny that this is pretty healthy (although I guess it contains no protein), but is that something that you think you could realistically have as a recurring meal at lunch, and have enough fuel to finish off the day and feel fulfilled? If so, then you probably don't need this book, and if not you'll probably find this book frustrating. One good thing is that while some meals don't really require any "cooking" as such (like the above), for the ones that do, there are recipes. Things like penne with roasted vegetables, spicy-sweet roasted walnuts, pesto cucumber boats etc. I'm not any kind of super-motivated cook in any way, but the recipes are (for the most part) simple and quick enough that I could see myself preparing many of them. Also the book devotes 10 pages or so to discuss the diet as a whole, it's goals, the science behind it an such. So do I recommend the book? Meh, sure, it's got some useful stuff in it, and I do believe in the science behind it (my dietician gave me a pretty heavy-duty scientific study writeup on it which was pretty compelling). But this book in particular is pretty over-priced for what it is, and while I think it is cool to get a feel for what some Mediterranean diet-compliant meals might look like, I don't think the particular meals that they present here are particularly compelling, nor are there enough of them.

"The Mediterranean Diet for Beginners" explains where the diet originated, how it was discovered and made public to the world, what it is, and its health benefits. It then provides a seven day sample meal plan, followed by a selection of recipes for breakfast, lunch, snacks, dinner and dessert. The heart of the diet is fresh vegetables and fruit, seafood instead of meat, whole grains, nuts, olive oil and red wine. But this is not a "fad" diet or a diet simply to lose weight; this is a lifestyle change. This intended lifestyle emulates the way of life of those who lived on the Mediterranean coasts and whose daily exercise and moderate healthful eating produced longer and healthier lives. It includes joyously lingering over your meal with friends and family. This lifestyle change from the standard American diet-- that is high in unhealthy fats and processed food and is ordered and eaten rapidly and usually alone-- is radical. This is a life change such as cutting up your credit card and paying only in cash, or selling your car so you will go everywhere by bicycle and public transportation. The book carefully guides you through this transition and you must be prepared to purge your kitchen of every food that is unhealthy and would be a stumbling block to your new resolve, your new life. The book does not mention that in the last decades fast food, pizza, ice cream and soda machines have infiltrated some of the Mediterranean coasts where the healthiest people had lived. The result? Pediatricians notice in their young charges a striking tendency to diabetes, high blood pressure and high cholesterol as the changing diet is producing an epidemic of obesity and related maladies. Do you need any more incentive to trying what's suggested in this book?

Very well written simple east to follow instructions Gteat book

This book, the Mediterranean Diet for Beginners, is intriguing to read because it provides a lot of history about the Mediterranean way of eating. Before reading this book, I thought that this was just another fad diet that would work for me for a week or two. I heard about the book and decided to give dieting another try before swimsuit season. To my surprise, this is not a fad diet at all! The Mediterranean Diet has been a way of life for many people throughout the world for a long, long time. The book discusses the history, health benefits, and simple common sense about food. The only negative I found with this book, which I find with quite a few diet and recipe books, is that “fresh” foods are not as easily found in the Midwest. By “fresh”, we mean it was fresh a week ago in Florida and just arrived here yesterday. But this problem is not the book’s fault. I have tried a few of the recipes, such as the roasted honey-cinnamon apples which were awesome! I have also bookmarked quite a few more to try this later this spring or summer.

Very good recipes and easy to follow

Very good book, covering the Mediterranean diet, a lot of useful information. Nice recipes, I would recommend if you were thinking of starting The Mediterranean Diet.

Good book

Before I purchased this book, I did some research for the best mediterranean diet books available. This is the best if you are just starting and have tried every possible diet out there. I have been searching for the perfect balance lifestyle, that is quick and easy for the fast paced days we have seemed to have acquired. No time to cook and if it takes longer than 20 minutes to prepare we opt for pre packaged quick and easy processed foods. This book has very quick, easy to prepare meals that uses everything I already have in my pantry. I have tried the paleo in which I did lose weight and with no grains I had lots of energy, but I found it very hard to stick to. I have been to Greece and I fell in love, i would move there in a heartbeat. The country is gorgeous, the food was amazing, always fresh, colorful and simple. The Souvlakis were amazing, i never got enough greek salad with the big chunk of goats mllk feta nestled on top. I want my family to follow me on this way of eating and with so many choices and easy prep, I think they will welcome the change. I recommend this book highly for a great start to a new beginning for a healthier way of living.

These recipes are a culinary delight! Perfect for those busy mid-week meals!

Good value, but no pictures at all of recipes.