Which brings up another important issue. What Ms. Stahl ingested was “fresh picked” cactus giving her raw hoodia, not the processed hoodia powder which is contained in all hoodia supplements. From what we know about trying to extract nutrients from other “real sources” of nutrients – garlic and fruit extracts for instance - these extracted powders or pills do not offer any of the benefits provided by the real thing. So even if raw hoodia does provide some benefits, powdered hoodia most likely cannot.
The other major problem with hoodia is that even if hoodia did work as advertised, there is no guarantee that there is actual hoodia in the hoodia supplements. There have been stories that up to two-thirds of all the hoodia supplements sold in the United States are counterfeit. An independent lab analysis of seventeen different hoodia products found that only six of these products actually contained any hoodia.
Hoodia gordonii has been on a list of protected/endangered species since 2004 and that means that all genuine hoodia exported from South Africa needs to have a Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species in Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) permit. Unscrupulous hoodia brokers are counterfeiting these licenses in order to sell who-knows-what as 100% hoodia.
And even if the hoodia is legally obtained - and is actual hoodia - the hoodia powder is frequently cut with fillers so as to allow suppliers to sell more "hoodia." This means that there is less hoodia in the supplement than the buyer is led to believe. In the case of hoodia, less of something that doesn’t do anything for you anyway.
Spending your money on any weight loss supplement is a bad idea, but spending on hoodia is the worst “investment” that anyone can make.
Article comments
1 - sal m
h-oodia does nothing of the kind. and there are things that are organic that are unhealthy as well.
2 - chantal stone
wow, I'm glad I read this...a friend and I were going to try h-oodia, but I won't bother now.
thanks, Sal.
and why is h-oodia a banned word??
3 - sal m
chantal:
h-oodia is probably a banned word because it's one of the main subjects of spam. the post that i responded to - which has been deleted - was touting the benefits of h-oodia.