The African Hoodia Gordonii

There is loads of information and misinformation available about Hoodia, so it is easy to get confused. So, what exactly is Hoodia ? Hoodia is a bitter tasting succulent plant. Hoodia Gordonii was used by the San tribes of Kalahari Desert for centuries. They were eating Hoodia Gordonii when they were on long hunting trips in order to suppress their hunger.  It is a succulent plant that looks almost like cactus. Due to this it is often known as the African Hoodia Cactus. A fully grown Hoodia plant is about six feet tall.

It took three decades for the South African Laboratories to find out the specific appetite suppressing element in Hoodia. This active element is known as P57 and is licensed to Phytophram, a British pharmaceutical company. According to the clinical study done by Phytophram, it showed that obese people who consumed P57 ate 1000 calories less in their daily diet and had no side effects. It just means that P57 reduces the desire to eat. P57 was so promising in showing results that Pfizer went on to purchase the worldwide marketing rights from Phytophram and invested huge amount of money to produce P57 based diet pills.

P57 is still not available in the form of a pill and perhaps would never be. The main aim of Pfizer was by no means to harvest P57 from Hoodia plants. Their main idea was to make a detailed study of P57 element and later create artificial version for much less cost than that of harvesting the actual Hoodia gordonii plant for obtaining P57. But making the artificial version too was very expensive. Thus it took back its deal with Phytopharm thinking that the P57 drug was not practical.

Hoodia Gordonii is a very delicate plant and it requires proper climate and soil to grow to maintain its appetite suppressing power. Many efforts were made to grow the Hoodia plant in many other places like USA, Mexico and China. But all proved to be unproductive. You cannot purchase Hoodia directly from the Kalahari Desert either as there are a number of reasons that make the availability of the Hoodia Gordonii from the Kalahari Desert very tough.

The first major reason is the Phytopharm. Just because Pfizer took back its deal Phytopharm did not let go. At the end of the year 2004, Phytopharm found a new partner called Unilever. They made a deal that let the Unilever Company to make use of Hoodia Gordonii extract in their consumer products. The initial products are supposed to be released by the end of 2008. Thus, in order to encourage these products the Phytopharm has locked up a large quantity of Hoodia Gordonii that is found in the Kalahari Desert. Thus only a small amount of it is left for the others to buy.

The second reason is as well related to the Phytopharm. Phytopharm has the right on Hoodia Gordonii to be used as a weight loss product. It is indeed strange to hear that Hoodia, which was used by the San Tribe for centuries, is now suddenly a property of the Phytopharm. Officially no one other than the Phytopharm is allowed to sell Hoodia Gordonii as a weight loss product.

The third reason could be the dishonesty and greed regarding the Hoodia Gordonii. As media is very active around Hoodia Gordonii, it didn’t take a long time for tainted supplement companies to bring out their own, the so called ‘The Best Hoodia Supplement’. Every year people all over the globe spend loads of money in order to lose some pounds. Many companies produce any kind of magical weight loss pill and claim it as the authentic Hoodia supplement and sell it cheap. By the time one realizes that it includes no real Hoodia such companies would have had no more business and would  appear later on with some other brand name.

So, yes with hoodia, there do come a lot of confusions. The best a consumer can do is to stay away from any phony and lesser known companies. Also one must not buy any hoodia products on Ebay.