Unique Hoodia - Simply The Best Hoodia Product On The Market

An inside look at the Hoodia Business.

Hoodia is an extremely popular appetite suppressant and is used world wide by people wanting to lose weight. There are almost 13 varieties of Hoodia plant known to us, yet the essential ingredient that helps reduce appetite is only present in the Hoodia gordonii plant. This rare plant is found in the South Africa’s Kalahari Desert. Due to its great commercial value as diet supplements, it is being cultivated extensively numerous state owned farms of South Africa.

For all those people who think Hoodia plant is a new discovery here is a piece of information: South Africa’s San tribe have been using Hoodia plant for hundreds of years. It has helped them curb their hunger and thirst during hunting trips through the desert which used to stretch for months. Consequently they never had large supplies of food and drink on their trips. Eating the Hoodia plant enabled them to maintain their energy level despite the reduced caloric intake.

The hoodia plant was studied for the first time by the South African State Research Institute in 1963. A patent right application for the method of extracting of the p57 molecule from the plant was filed in 1995. This patent was granted in 2005 to the company Phytopharm.

Hoodia has fast become the most popular item in the marketplace. You can find numerous Hoodia products on the internet as well as in many medical and drug stores. You can find them in various forms; liquids and pill being the most common. All of these products claim to be Hoodia gordonii but the question that looms over all is how many of them actually contain this all-important substance?

Hoodia has become a golden business opportunity after the ephedra based products are no longer available in the market. However the high demand for this product cannot be met by its current supply. This has made Hoodia an expensive product. Various businesses are taking advantage of this opportunity and are sell substandard and fake products. Innocent customers believe that they are buying the real thing and end up wasting their time and money. The market is full of such products which do not contain the essential molecule p57. There are some products which were made from Hoodia grown in other parts of the world. One has to be very careful when buying Hoodia products.

Hoodia is a new food and therefore requires registration, according to European rules, to be used in Europe. This requires very expensive safety studies to be carried out and many companies cannot afford to go through this process. Unilever and Phytopharm are working together on developing a new product called Slim-Fast which contains pure Hoodia gordonii extract along with p57 molecule. Phytopharm was granted the patent for the method of extracting p57 from the Hoodia plant and not for the Hoodia gordonii plant itself. Slim-fast is expected to be introduced soon.

The extensive research on the Hoodi gordonii and other plants has helped us realize the miracles of nature. It has focused our mind towards developing better and safer, natural products for reducing appetite and losing weight.