The Erasmus+ CIELO Project International Seminar brought together experts, educators, and students from Latin America and Europe. Participants explored three key approaches to preventing childhood obesity beyond diet: environmental factors, emotional self-regulation, and biological rhythms
By: Ángela Cisneros | Universidad La Salle Noroeste
Understanding childhood obesity requires analyzing the multiple factors that drive it. On the first day of the Erasmus+ CIELO Project International Seminar, held on January 27, experts addressed this reality through three key approaches to child health: chemical and environmental factors, emotional self-regulation, and biological rhythms. These three innovative lessons for tackling a shared challenge were presented in a virtual space that fostered dialogue among academic authorities, faculty, and students from the 12 European and Latin American universities that make up the project consortium.
CIELO Project: A priority in higher education
The rectors of the 12 partner universities reaffirmed that the project—Innovative Curriculum to Develop Capacities in Higher Education Institutions in Latin America to Prevent Obesity and Promote Mental Health (CIELO)—is a strategic priority for their institutions. Through a video screened at the seminar’s opening, they highlighted the relevance of the initiative’s approach: training professionals in key competencies to tackle childhood obesity and promote mental health through the design and implementation of an online postgraduate course and the eToolKit app.
Attendees were introduced to the structure of the working teams and the core objectives of CIELO. They also heard from three project managers who shared insights on what it means to collaborate on this international effort for child health. Dr. María Anabell Covarrubias Díaz Couder (Universidad La Salle Noroeste), Dr. Félix Canet Prades (Universidad para la Cooperación Internacional), and Dr. Flavio Carrión (Universidad del Alba) agreed that the CIELO project required establishing a common language to address the pedagogical needs of professionals in Chile, Costa Rica, and Mexico. A significant challenge, yet one made possible through academic cooperation, multidisciplinary teamwork, and technology.
With this institutional backing, the day was structured around three keynote conferences that challenged traditional views focused solely on diet.
BPA: The invisible guest that disrupts our metabolism
Dr. Fabián Núñez Flores from Universidad Hispanoamericana (Costa Rica) demonstrated how obesity is linked to environmental factors that disrupt our metabolism. In his keynote, “Risks of Bisphenol A (BPA) in Food Packaging, Its Migration, and Its Relationship with Obesity and Overweight: What Scientific Evidence Tells Us,” he defined BPA as a chemical compound that can interfere with the human hormonal system.
The expert presented evidence showing how BPA, used in manufacturing plastics that line everyday food cans and containers, can migrate from packaging into food and disrupt fat and carbohydrate metabolism—key metabolic alterations in the development of obesity.
Following the talk, attendees deepened the discussion with numerous questions. The speaker also provided practical recommendations to reduce BPA exposure, such as avoiding heating food in plastic containers, opting for glass or stainless steel, and reducing the consumption of canned foods.
Self-regulation: A powerful way to understand well-being
Viewing well-being as a dynamic process rather than a fleeting state can transform health outcomes. Dr. Andrómeda Valencia Ortiz, who holds a PhD in Health Psychology and is a Level I Researcher at Mexico’s National System of Researchers, championed this premise during her talk, “From Well-being to Action: The Role of Self-Regulation in Mental Health and Healthy Lifestyles.”
She explained how our understanding has shifted from viewing well-being as a subjective, achievable result defined by the absence of distress, to recognizing it as a changing, contextual phenomenon deeply tied to trainable psychological skills. Within this framework, self-regulation is the capacity to respond adaptively to distress and make better decisions, even when facing adverse situations.
Dr. Andrómeda outlined that self-regulation operates through three core pillars: emotional regulation, inhibition of impulsive responses, and decision-making aligned with personal values. These are all skills that can be developed through practical strategies, ultimately leading to healthy and sustainable lifestyles.
Melatonin, circadian rhythms, and obesity
Mexican neuroscientist Dr. Aurea Blancas Velázquez helped attendees understand the body’s inner workings through a neuroscience lens in her talk, “Myths and Realities of Melatonin as a Biological Rhythm Synchronizer.” She began by explaining melatonin and circadian rhythms, detailing key components of the brain’s circadian system: the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN)—the master clock that generates all bodily rhythms—and clock genes.
After mapping out these concepts, she presented scientific studies on melatonin’s effects on common disruptions, such as jet lag. Evidence shows that melatonin can help recalibrate the internal clock to a new time zone, shorten the time it takes to fall sleep by an average of 9.31 minutes, and increase total sleep duration by approximately 19 minutes.
However, she emphasized that much remains to be researched. Therefore, it is crucial to debunk myths—such as calling melatonin “the sleep hormone” when it is actually “the darkness hormone”—and critically examine the widespread over-the-counter availability of melatonin products and the common misconception that, because it is naturally produced by the body, it is harmless and free of side effects.
Dr. Aurea concluded by showing how high-fat and high-sugar diets, combined with nighttime screen exposure, cause a desynchronization between peripheral biological clocks and the central clock. This misalignment, she explained, is a key physiological mechanism in the development of obesity and metabolic disorders.
Through these sessions, attendees at the CIELO International Seminar engaged in a dialogue that paves the way for concrete actions to address obesity from a broader, more human-centered perspective, closely aligned with the realities of our communities.
