Mr Enric Canela
Enric Canela, Emeritus Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the University of Barcelona and collaborator of the Royal European Academy of Doctors (READ), shares with the academic community the latest article published on his blog, enriccanela.cat, an outreach platform devoted to health and well-being, as well as his latest publication in the newspaper El Punt-Avui, where he focuses on education and research, and the digital newspaper El Matí Digital, where he addresses current social issues. Specifically, these are the articles “Why Am I Not Losing Weight?”, “The ‘Threshold Frequency’ of Education” and “Plater: Renewables, Yes, but with the Territory,” published during the month of August across the three media outlets.
In “Why Am I Not Losing Weight?”, the expert argues that difficulty losing weight cannot be explained simply by a lack of willpower, since the human body, shaped over hundreds of thousands of years in an environment of scarcity, defends body weight through mechanisms that often override personal discipline. The hypothalamus, Canela explains, functions like a thermostat: it establishes a reference point for body weight, determined by genetics — accounting for between 40% and 70% of variability between individuals — epigenetics and accumulated physiological learning, even before birth. When weight falls below this threshold, the brain does not interpret it as a healthy achievement, but as a risk of famine, making calorie-rich food more attractive. This is why someone who has lost weight often feels hungrier than another person of the same weight who has never dieted. Faced with this biological reality, he recommends eating slowly, prioritising vegetables, pulses, whole grains and protein, getting enough sleep and staying physically active.
In “The ‘Threshold Frequency’ of Education,” the READ collaborator analyses the Catalonia Business Innovation Strategy 2026–2030, which proposes exceeding 3,000 start-ups and scale-ups by 2030, compared with the current figure of 2,400. Canela draws on the photoelectric effect: it is not the intensity of light that releases electrons, but rather exceeding a threshold frequency. Applied to innovation, he argues that simply injecting more money is not enough. The bottleneck, in his view, is not so much a lack of scientific knowledge as the difficulty of converting that knowledge into economic value. There are leaks between research, intellectual property, technology transfer, entrepreneurship and scaling.
Many university patents never reach the market, transfer processes are bureaucratic, academic incentives reward publication over knowledge transfer, there is a lack of patient capital in the early stages, research teams often have little business experience, and almost no Catalan start-up grows into a medium-sized or large company. He also believes there is a lack of ambitious innovative public procurement. For this reason, he considers it a mistake to make the number of start-ups the main objective: it is a weak indicator, easy to communicate and relatively easy to inflate.
Finally, in “Plater: Renewables, Yes, but with the Territory,” Canela criticises the Sectoral Territorial Plan for Wind and Photovoltaic Generation (Plater) designed by the Government of Catalonia. Although Catalonia needs to multiply its renewable-energy capacity if it is to reduce energy dependence, he argues that the scale of the plan, its centralisation in large operators and the burden placed on agricultural and natural land rather than on urban rooftops and already transformed land deepen the imbalance between urban and rural areas. The expert believes there is still room to clarify three issues before final approval: the territorial quota for each county and municipality, the calculation of the historical energy burden already assumed, and the real potential of rooftops, industrial estates, car parks and already transformed land before occupying new land. The energy transition, he concludes, will only succeed if it is also territorially fair.
