Suppressing the Appetite with Hoodia

When more than $40 billion a year is spent on diet products and methods of slimming down, it's no wonder that when hoodia was discovered by the west a few years back that it took off so well.

What is Hoodia?

It's a cactus-like plant that only grows wild in the Kalahari Desert of South Africa. Unlike dangerous diet stimulants like Ephedra and Phenfen that are banned because of their dangerous side effects, hoodia doesn't stimulate at all. In fact, it fools the brain into thinking the body is full, even if you've just nibbled on a cracker.

Making a big appetite go away is great for people struggling to lose weight. A while back, 60 Minutes did a show on hoodia and actually traveled to Africa to interview Bushmen who eat it. What's amazing is that the Bushmen use it as they go out on long hunts for food. It keeps them from being hungry and thirsty on their hunts. They've been eating hoodia for thousands of years, though the west discovered this plant only a few short years ago.

The interview on 60 Minutes

"The first scientific investigation of the plant was conducted at South Africa's national laboratory. Because Bushmen were known to eat hoodia, it was included in a study of indigenous foods.

'What they found was when they fed it to animals, the animals ate it and lost weight,' says Dr. Richard Dixey, who heads an English pharmaceutical company called Phytopharm that is trying to develop weight-loss products based on hoodia.

Was hoodia's potential application as an appetite suppressant immediately obvious?

'No, it took them a long time. In fact, the original research was done in the mid 1960s,' says Dixey. It took the South African national laboratory 30 years to isolate and identify the specific appetite-suppressing ingredient in hoodia. When they found it, they applied for a patent and licensed it to Phytopharm.