The History of Hoodia

Hoodia is not the “latest thing” when it comes to weight loss. Hoodia is also not a drug. It is a food that has been around for twenty five thousand years. The plant is native to the Kahlari desert. In Africa it was used and still is used as an appetite suppressant and as a way to stave off thirst. It is only in the last decade or so that Hoodia has come to the fore as a weight loss aid in Western cultures.

Many different native people in Africa use Hoodia. The Sans tribe which live (and still live) in the Kalahari Desert area of Africa are the most famous users of it. For centuries, warriors would set off on

long hunting trips across the desert with no food or water to sustain them. They would feed them selves and their hunting dogs slices of the hoodia plant so that they could have the stamina and energy to

keep hunting. The Anikhwe of northern Botswana feed children who are victims of famine hoodia to keep them alive.

Hoodia looks like a cactus but more correctly it is a succulent. Often it is marketed as one but this is a bit misleading. The plant is abundant in many places in South Africa, especially where there is sand. Besides the Kahlari desert it is also found in arid terrains in Botswana, Angola and Namiba.

The taste of the plant is actually very bitter. This is why it is sold in North American and European countries in supplement form rather than in dried form. Raw hoodia tastes a lot like an old putrid cucumber.

Hoodia did not evolve into a commercial wiegth loss supplement until about thirty years ago when an entity called the South African Council started experimenting with it to see if it could be made into a source of nutrition that did not cuase so much weight loss. The results were sold to a company called Phytopharm which spent millions trying to make it into a weight loss pill. Finally the drug company Pfizer got into the act in the 1980s and that was when most of the research was done that proved that taking hoodia caused most people to eat a thousand calories less a day than usual and without side effects!

Still Pfizer never made a pill from Hoodia. For now it is sold in weight loss formulations. Most of these formulations also contain green tea, which also speeds weight loss.

National conservation laws in South Africa and Namibia protect Hoodia. It can only be collected or grown with a permit issued by the South African Council This is why it is not the very cheapest of weight loss supplements on the market. It is also why the big pharmaceutical companies never got hold of it. The South African council has been very vigilante when it comes to making sure that there is enough of this rare plant around to sustain native peoples that use it such as the Anikwhe and the Sans.