Real Hoodia vs. the Scams
by
site editor Elias J. Derrick, last update: 5/12/2012 10:21:53 AM.
hoodia
Real Hoodia and many of the products out there being marketed as Hoodia are completely different things. Real Hoodia is an extremely expensive product to produce, so many distributors of the product find ways to cut corners and lower the costs of producing the supplements in order to fatten their profit margins.
The biggest scam being perpetrated involves using a type of the Hoodia plant other than the Gordonii variety. Hoodia Gordonii is the only type of the cactus-like plant which contains P-57, the active ingredient. There are actually twenty versions of the plant, and by using another type they can drastically reduce costs and still technically market their product as being real Hoodia. This type of scam is usually perpetrated by Chinese companies, so if you come to a site offering Chinese Hoodia and the supplements/liquid is half the price or less than the other sites that you've seen then you can pretty much be sure that they are not selling real Hoodia Gordonii. Another way to see if it is real Hoodia Gordonii or just some inactive version of the plant is to check if the site has a CITES certificate available to view upon request. This is important to note because the only company with the right to grow Hoodia Gordonii and export it as a weight loss supplement is doing so in South Africa, and the government of South Africa does not allow any real Hoodia Gordonii to be exported without first receiving this certificate. Since Hoodia Gordonii is listed as a protected species this certificate shows that it was grown on a farm for the purpose of making a supplement rather that taken from the wild.
In the case of a company called Pure Hoodia Inc., they were filling their supplements with a very tiny amount of real hoodia and actually substituting the rest with sawdust. It was particularly obvious to the scientists conducting the independent lab verification that something was amiss because the capsules it is sold in are too small to hold 400mg of real hoodia gordonii.
Other times the scams are not so blatant, like companies which mix real Hoodia in with a much cheaper appetite suppressant but still charge the same prices as pure Hoodia Gordonii capsules. The most common things that it is mixed with are green tea extract and magnesium. Green tea extract is a much milder appetite suppressant, and it is a stimulant. Green tea is also a lot cheaper to produce than real Hoodia is. The other one, magnesium is even more of a rip off. Some companies market magnesium as an appetite suppressant because magnesium deficiency can cause an increase in hunger. However it is quite presumptuous to assume that every person who is overweight and/or has an active appetite is suffering from a magnesium deficiency, and this is by no means an equivalent for real Hoodia.