Paula Mee: Dietician, author, university lecturer and media figure with a passion for healthy eating

Born: June 13, 1963

Died: December 20, 2022

Paula Mee, one of Ireland’s leading dieticians, has died at the age of 59 following a short illness. A competent and engaging public expert on nutrition, Mee was also an author, lecturer at the Technological University of Dublin (TU Dublin) and occasional columnist for The Irish Times.

Her books include Mediterranean Mood Foods: What to Eat to Help Beat Depression and Have a Longer and Healthier Life (2019), Gut Feeling: Delicious Low FODMAP Recipes to Soothe the Symptoms of a Sensitive Gut (2017) with dietician Lorraine Maher, and Your Middle Years – Love Them, Live Them, Own Them (2016), which she co-wrote with dietician Kate O’Brien.

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Mee’s excellent communication skills and caring, compassionate manner meant that she left an impression on whoever she met – whether that was at corporate healthy eating talks, at meetings of organisations such as the Coeliac Society of Ireland, or when contributing to television or radio shows.

She became a household name in the 2000s when she was the nutritionist on the RTÉ One television show, Health Squad. During that time, she was also a regular guest on the Marian Finucane weekend radio show on RTÉ Radio 1. And her occasional nutrition columns in the Health & Family supplement of The Irish Times from 2013-2016 were very popular with readers.

She wrote that she wouldn’t promise to make people thin but would instead help people understand who they are and how the food they eat could affect them positively, negatively, mentally and physically

Throughout her distinguished career, Mee held many significant roles. She was one of the first high-profile nutrition managers for a supermarket chain when she worked in the headquarters of Superquinn. She was also a senior nutritionist for the National Dairy Council. She held voluntary roles on the Food Safety Consultative Council of the Food Safety Authority of Ireland and on the board of consumer foods in An Bord Bia, the Irish food board for a time.

In 2004, Mee set up her own consultancy, offering nutrition workshops for businesses and patient groups as well as seeing private clients. In the promotion of this work, she wrote that she wouldn’t promise to make people thin but would instead help people understand who they are and how the food they eat could affect them positively, negatively, mentally and physically. And although she was a strong advocate of evidence-based approaches to weight management, she also embraced new trends including mindful eating, time-restricted eating and wholefood plant-based sustainable diets.

Mee was an active member and past president of the Irish Nutrition and Dietetics Institute (INDI), the professional body for dieticians in Ireland. Louise Reynolds, communications manager with INDI said Mee had great curiosity and spent a lot of time looking at different foods and cuisines. “She had real zest for life and a great sense of fun. She was always innovating and learning more about different diets and adapting the best of all cuisines for healthy eating. She shone a spotlight on gut health and was very interested in the fermented foods and fish of Japanese cuisine,” said Reynolds.

Paula Mee, who was born in Askeaton, Co Limerick, was the second eldest of 11 children of bank manager, John Francis (Johnny) Mee and pharmacist, Pauline (nee Fitzgibbon). The family lived in various towns in the west of Ireland as her father’s work required, latterly settling in Galway City.

Teaching science

Following her secondary school education, she completed a degree in biochemistry at University College Galway from 1980-1983 and a higher diploma in education the following year. She worked for a short time teaching science at second level and then in the pharmaceutical industry, before returning to college to complete a higher diploma in dietetics at Leeds Metropolitan University. She followed this with a master in health sciences in 1995. Her first clinical work as a dietician was in hospitals in Northern Ireland.

In the last four years of her life, Mee found love again with Dublin-based immunologist David Edgar and the couple married weeks before her death

In the early 1990s, Mee lived in Stillorgan, Co Dublin, with her first husband and their young son. Following the break-up of their marriage, she moved to Booterstown from where she ran her business while seeing private clients in a GP practice in nearby Blackrock. Latterly, she withdrew from seeing private clients and turned her attention to media engagements and her new passion for writing books.

Mee became an associate lecturer in human nutrition on the masters in applied culinary nutrition at TU Dublin in Tallaght in 2017. Annette Sweeney, programme lead on the masters course, says Mee had a great love of life and learning and that her passion for nutrition inspired her students. “She loved teaching and was brilliant at talking about the science of nutrition in a way that chefs could apply to their jobs. She also had a great love of food and cooking. She co-supervised research projects with me and had a keen interest in what our graduates went on to do.”

Throughout her life, Mee valued family and friends and was immensely proud of her son, Cian, who recently qualified as a chartered accountant. In the last four years of her life, Mee found love again with Dublin-based immunologist David Edgar and the couple married weeks before her death. His sharp sense of humour and caring nature helped ease her through the last difficult months of her life.

Paula is survived by her husband David, her son, Cian, her stepdaughters Olivia and Phoebe, stepson Charlie, her sisters Petrina, Clodagh, Dervla, Sandra, Finola and Lisa, brothers, Ronan, Morgan, Jonathan and David and wider family and friends. She was predeceased by her mother and father.