Every year, over 40 billion dollars is spent on remedies for losing weight. However, as practice shows, the remedies do not seem to help at all.
But, luckily, there is Hoodia. You might be unfamiliar with this name but surely you will never forget it as soon as you learn that it literally reduces the feeling of appetite to the minimum.
Hoodia is completely different from the traditional diet additives (Ephedra, for instance) many of which have been banned because of their harmful side effects. Hoodia works in a more sophisticated yet simple way: it persuades your stomach you've just had a big meal although the truth might be that you just had a small snack.
Hoodia Gordonii plant has been in the basic diet of South Africa's Bushmen for centuries exactly because it is natural and so efficient. The only place where you can find Hoodia is the Kalahari Desert in Africa - and don't let anyone fool you: it can't be found anywhere else.
Nigel Crawhall, a famous linguist and interpreter, had to ask an experienced local African tracker Toppies Kruiper for help in order to find this plant fast enough. Kruiper led 60 minutes’ teams into the desert of Kalahari. When asked whether he used Hoodia as part of his everyday diet he said, "They are delicious; I especially enjoy their taste and effect when new rains come to our land."
When we finally reached the place, Toppies demonstrated the way to deal with the plant. He took out a knife and carefully cut off the small stalk that reminded everyone of a little pickle and got rid of the spikes. Our reporter Stahl didn't hesitate to taste the plant and later described the experience in the following way, "It was actually something like a cucumber and not too bad, actually."
Stahl also added that there weren’t any side effects experienced - no changes in the condition of the stomach or the heart, just as if nothing had happened. But something did happen and "I would have to acknowledge it worked," she said at the end of the day. She spent the whole day without drinking or eating just because she didn't want to although she was the kind of person who had never said "no" to a tasty meal.
Hoodia is just being discovered by the Western countries; however, African Bushmen have known this plant for a long time.
Even in the era of globalization and high technology, some African Bushmen continue to live in traditional huts and eat only the food that they find in the desert.
It first began with thorough laboratory tests on Hoodia that were carried out in South Africa. The tests relied on the fact that indigenous population continued to live in a traditional way and consume this plant on a daily basis.
Dr. Richard Dixey, head of Phytopharm company, which is working on weight-loss products in which Hoodia is used, says the indigenous population first discovered the effects of Hoodia when they fed it to animals. The animals suddenly started to lose weight. However, the use of Hoodia as an appetite suppressant didn't become obvious until the 1960s when the research mentioned above was carried out.
The process was not easy; in fact, it took 30 years to detect the ingredient responsible for suppressing appetite in this plant. When it was found, the ingredient was immediately patented and the license was given to Phytopharm.
Further 20 million dollars was spent on different trials and overweight volunteers, with all trials ending with unexpectedly high success. The people taking Hoodia and consuming it regularly ate about 1,000 calories less per day than those from the group that carried on their normal life. By the way, on average, the amount of calories consumed by an American man is 2,600; women consume about 1,900 calories a day.
"If taken on a daily basis, Hoodia plant reduces your craving for food. This is a revolution in the industry of weight-loss," says Dixey.
There is another question: why would anybody give a patent for a plant? "The truth is that the patent only covers the use of this plant as a way of losing weight, which means that it is applied to the active ingredient that helps to suppress your appetite. Of course, nobody can patent the plant itself," explains Dixey.
This also means that no company can use Hoodia Gordonii to make products for weight loss without violating the patent rights.
Then, what about the numerous products for losing weight that can be found on the market? Many of them claim their products contain authentic Hoodia, although very often they use aggressive marketing campaigns based on the research results received by Phytopharm. Some campaigns use famous people to persuade people willing to become slim to buy their products, although often, just like in the case of Trimspa advertising the product with the help of Anna Nicole Smith, the remedy is dangerous for health.
Dixey says it's the direct violation of patent rights. Different companies steal the data from Phytopharm trying to make some quick money and fill the bottles with whatever they deem necessary. Such products are not only useless as they do not contain the amount of Hoodia needed, they might also be quite dangerous.
However, Dixey was not the only person whose rights were violated. Roger Chennels, a famous South African lawyer, says the Bushmen were amazed when they first heard about Hoodia having been patented from the news. He claims they didn't have any idea the information they gave would result in someone patenting the plant. Meanwhile, the research would have been impossible without the indigenous population of Africa. This actually has a name - biopiracy. We can speak about biopiracy when traditional knowledge is used with commercial purpose without clear consent of the population or compensation to the people.
Chennels said a number of letters was written in order to help the Bushmen receive fair compensation. This population has been ruthlessly exploited for hundreds of years: first by black tribes of Africa, later - by white people who came to colonize Africa.
Even at the end of the century, there were hunting expeditions of farmers who pursued and killed Bushmen, which is a known fact that has been documented.
Even today, this population experiences high unemployment and humiliation, lack of education and drinking problems. And just when they really had a chance to make things better and have a normal life, all thanks to the plant they had discovered and had been using for centuries, some company patented it without any permission whatsoever.
Chennels said he would go ahead and sue the company as well as the laboratory in which the experiments were carried out on the behalf of the Bushmen.
Finally, the sides came to an agreement. The South Africa Bushmen will get some part of the profit made, in case there is profit, of course.
As obvious as it might seem, the chances Hoodia offers might not be that simple to use. It turns out that making a pill from the active ingredient that will have hunger-suppressing effect is almost impossible. They can make it synthetically but it will be too expensive to produce it in large quantities, which is necessary to help thousands of people suffering from obesity without any hope ahead.
So, Phytopharm decided to use Hoodia entirely in the form of shakes and bars. However, considering the scale of the disease, it’s obvious that a greater amount of Hoodia is required for mass production.
Phytopharm then made a decision: to grow plantations of Hoodia in the place where it was originally found. The agronomist in charge Simon Mac William has a very challenging task: he is supposed to grow and deliver around a billion portions of the plant within two or three years. By his own words, organizing new plantations was one of the most difficult things he had ever had to do.
The main problem, he says, is that the plant is completely a new crop to grow. Although it has been growing in South Africa for thousands of years, it doesn't mean the same will be possible if the process is taken under control. There are many difficult questions, such as what kind of conditions we have to create, what kind of disease the plant might have, and how to make sure mistakes don't happen.
So, will they manage to grow enough plants to begin mass production? Mr. Mac William seems to be perfectly confident. They have a special expansion program in progress and if everything goes well, soon the demand will be met by the supply.
Phytopharm is going to start serious marketing plans and produce special products that can replace meals. The species of Hoodia cultivated in the plantations are slightly different from the plant in the Kalahari Desert. Their taste is more bitter but if compared with the original Hoodia plants, these species can grow a lot faster.
The problem of taste doesn't seem so serious if we think about how many lives Hoodia plant can actually improve. Besides, Phytopharm promises that as soon as Hoodia products appear on the shelves, consumers will be pleased to find out the taste is not so bad.
