Is eating the Mediterranean Diet expensive?

A healthy lifestyle can cost less! 

Find out exactly how much money you can save by switching to a Mediterranean diet from a Western one. The Mediterranean diet relies on less processed, more accessible, and affordable whole foods when preparing meals. There is a long-term financial benefit to adopting a Mediterranean diet.

According to our year-long studies and testing in 2021 and 2022, and the current studies of 2023, to follow the Mediterranean diet is not expensive, and its cost is substantially lower than a Western diet. The cost of buying the ingredients at your local grocery store is between $8 and $10 US per day per person in the United States and Euros 5-8 in Europe for 3 meals and 2 snacks.

Low-income rural residents of Italy were nourishing themselves with this incredibly cheap diet in the Mediterranean region's olive-growing regions in the 1950s and early 1960s after World War II. Frugality, eating food generated by farming, and cooking using ingredients they produced and breaded.

Watch a documentary in Italian from 1954 about an early food study of the habitant of the town with no cardiovascular disease

Comparison chart between Western American Diet and Mediterranean Diet

  • Western Liberal Diet
  • Western Moderate Diet
  • Mediterranean Diet Liberal
  • Mediterranean Diet Moderate
  • Western Liberal Diet
  • Western Moderate Diet
  • Mediterranean Diet Liberal
  • Mediterranean Diet Moderate
updated on October 2022 based on an average single male 19-50 years old cooking at home all the meals everyday

Source: USDA