60 Minutes Report On The Hoodia Gordonii Weight Loss Diet
Friday, 11 April 2008
Every year dieters spend over 40 billion dollars on weight loss products. However, these products do not seem to be giving the results that they boldly claim. As a result the 60 Minutes Program did an expose on the Hoodia diet pill.
However, since the discovery of the Hoodia cactus and the Hoodia diet people have been enjoying more permanent weight loss results in rapid time. Hoodia is not like Ephedra and Phenfen which have since been banned due to their very adverse side effects. Hoodia is different from many appetite suppressants in that scientists believe that it actually fools a person’s brain to believe that it’s full even though you have not eaten.
Lesley Stahl of 60 Minutes reported on the Hoodia phenomena.
“Hoodia, a plant that tricks the brain by making the stomach feel full, has been in the diet of South Africa’s Bushmen for thousands of years.”
The Sans Bushmen have been enjoying the natural appetite suppressing benefits of the Hoodia Gordonii plant for thousands of years as the Kalahari Desert of South Africa is where this succulent grows the best.
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An experienced Hoodia tracker known as Toppies Kruiper assisted Lesley and an interpreter known as Nigel Crawhall in their search for the Hoodia plant. Kruiper, a local bushman, advised that he likes to eat Hoodia best just after rain as it is “really quite delicious” at that time.
When the 60 Minutes team located a Hoodia Gordonii plant Toppies removed the sharp spines on the cactus stem and ate it. Lesley Stahl tried it too and described it as “not bad” and cucumbery in texture.
Did Hoodia work on the 60 Minutes correspondent?
Absolutely. In fact, Lesley stated she experienced no adverse Hoodia side effects or any funny after taste and no heart palpitations. Further, she felt full all day, even at regular mealtimes. She concluded that “it did work”, as she had no desire to either drink or eat for the whole day after taking Hoodia.
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The Sans Bushman have been living in the Kalahari desert for over 100,000 years and so are well familiar with the positive side effects of Hoodia and the Hoodia Gordonii plant.
Hoodia first came to the attention of scientists during a research 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, the head of Phytopharm who holds the patent to the p57 molecule found in the Hoodia Gordonii plant.
Was the appetite suppressing qualities of the Hoodia Gordonii plant obvious to scientists immediately?
Apparently not. In fact, it took thirty years for scientists to actually isolate and identify the ingredient in the Hoodia cactus that actually suppresses the appetite. As soon as they found it they applied for a patent and then onsold that licence to Phytopharm.
As a result, Phytopharm has spent over 20 million dollars on Hoodia research which has included trials on animals and also on humans which have all yielded quite astonishing weight loss results.
In fact, it was found that people who ate Hoodia Gordonii actually consumed on average 1000 calories than they normally would every single day.
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“If you take this compound every day, your wish to eat goes down. And we’ve seen that very, very dramatically,” says Dixey.
Phytopharm has a patent on being able to use the plant as a weight loss materia and the active compounds in it for Hoodia weight loss products.
Does that mean no-one else can manufacture Hoodia weight loss products? “As a weight-management product without infringing the patent, that’s correct,” says Dixey.
However, many weight loss products claim to contain Hoodia in them and also actually use the Phytopharm clinical results to promote their own products.
But Dixey isn’t the only one who’s felt ripped off.
The Sans Bushmen found out that Phytopharm had a patent for the plant and contacted a lawyer known as Roger Chennells. “The San did not even know about it,” says Chennells. “They had given the information that led directly toward the patent.”
The taking of traditional cultural knowledge in this way without any form of monetary compensation is known as “bio-piracy.”
“You have said, and I’m going to quote you, ‘that the San felt as if someone had stolen the family silver,’” says Stahl to Chennells. “So what did you do?”
“I wouldn’t want to go into some of the details as to what kind of letters were written or what kind of threats were made,” says Chennells. “We engaged them. They had done something wrong, and we wanted them to acknowledge it.”
Ultimately a settlement has been reached and the Sans Bushmen are said to receive a profit percentage.
Given the obesity epidemic in the United States Phytopharm is set to announce further Hoodia marketing plans with meal replacement Hoodia weight loss products on most supermarket shelves by 2008.
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