Looking for cheap Hoodia? Read this first!
by
site editor Elias J. Derrick, last update: 5/12/2012 10:13:54 AM.
hoodia
Cheap hoodia is definitely hoodia that you should be suspicious of. Many people refer to hoodia as a cactus, while this is not true it does have a lot in common with a cactus; it grows very slowly like a cactus. This means it is expensive to produce, and cheap hoodia may be more than just cheap in price, but in quality as well. With so much money being spent on weight loss people have devised ways to greatly fatten their profit margins and make themselves rich. There are a few tricks that the growers of the plant and manufacturers of the supplements drive down their prices to offer cheap hoodia.
Only the top part of the hoodia gordonii succulent plant contains the appetite suppressing molecule, P-57. One way to get cheap hoodia, or at least cheaper, is for the farmer to mix in the roots of the plant. This process greatly increases the amount of crop the farmer has to sell, but also greatly decreases the potency of it. Another way to get cheap hoodia on his part is to make the extract weaker. Average hoodia extract is 20:1; this means they use twenty grams of the plant to make one gram of extract. Some of the people who grow and harvest hoodia will push it down as low as 5:1, and sell their cheap hoodia for huge profits.
Most of the time cheap hoodia is offered at far lower prices than average it is the manufacturers of the supplement who have cut corners. They will dilute a batch of strong hoodia extract, or further dilute a batch of weaker extract sold by one of the farmers discussed above. Sometimes they will use another appetite suppressant. To avoid the regulations on pharmaceutical products this is usually green tea extract or some other strong form of caffeine. This may be cheap hoodia, but it is obviously not pure hoodia. There are two problems with this method; the first is that green tea is not as powerful an appetite suppressant as hoodia. The second is that this ruins one of the best things about hoodia supplements, namely they have no side effects. While caffeine based supplements do not have as strong of side effects as an amphetamine appetite suppressant they do cause jitters and insomnia. The other way to dilute the mixture and make cheap hoodia is to simply put useless filler in the supplement along with hoodia. This is usually some type of nondescript plant matter, but one time it was shown to be actual sawdust. Magnesium is also commonly used to make cheap hoodia, even though some people claim it can be taken as a weight loss supplement and blame magnesium deficiency for an over active appetite these claims are always wildly exaggerated. The final way that manufacturers make cheap hoodia is to simply make very small capsules. Anything less than 400mg of pure hoodia extract per serving will not be enough to suppress appetite effectively.
Other than diluting it or selling very small amounts, the other way that people are offering cheap hoodia is by selling a type other than hoodia gordonii. There are about twenty plants in the hoodia family but only hoodia gordonii contains P-57 which can have weight loss effects. If one site is offering cheap hoodia at a much lower price than most other sites you should see if it mentions the word gordonii anywhere in the site. The only place where hoodia gordonii is being grown and harvested is in South Africa, and the government there requires a CITES certificate to accompany all shipments of hoodia gordonii that are exported. When you are on a site offering cheap hoodia you should also see if a CITIES certificate is available to view upon request.