Over the past few years the dieting world has been shook up by the introduction of a number of speciality hoodia products, such as hoodia gum, hoodia chews, and hoodia pops. All of these products claim to be able to effectively and almost instantly suppress your appetite. Therefore helping you to lose weight because by controlling your appetite you will eat less.
While that sounds fantastic, I doubt these products have any affect on appetite and do very little for weight loss. For starters, I doubt that any of the hoodia gum products contain authentic hoodia gordonii. The hoodia gordonii plant is found only in South Africa and contains a molecule called P57. This molecule is the active ingredient in the hoodia plant that tricks the brain into thinking you are full. There are several varieties of hoodia, but only the hoodia gordonii variety has the ability to suppress appetite.
Right now we are experiencing a short supply of hoodia gordonii because there is so much demand for it, and that demand can’t be met. This has resulted in the price of hoodia gordonii skyrocketing. Over the past few years many manufacturers have seen how popular hoodia supplements have become and have jumped on the bandwagon. However, in order to improve their profits they have cut corners, either by diluting their products so they actually contain very little hoodia gordonii, or by not using any at all!
Companies should not be allowed to get away with this, but they can because there is no regulation for hoodia supplements or products. It’s all down to the consumer to make sure that they know enough of the facts to make sure they do not get scammed or tricked into buying phoney products. Sadly, it’s true that most of the products out there are fake, most don’t contain any hoodia gordonii and those that do contain only very small amounts. Experts have stated that the percentage of fake hoodia products that are actually on sale could in excess of 80%!
However, there are a number of things you can do to protect yourself from scammers. The most important thing to do is to look for CITES certificates and independent lab test results when you are considering buying a hoodia product like hoodia gum. These should be able to be found on the companies website. If you cannot find them, then the product they are marketing is very likely to be a fake that does not contain genuine hoodia gordonii.
Even though I have researched several hoodia gum websites, I have yet to find a site that clearly displays these documents for their customers. This leads me to believe that the products they are marketing do not contain any hoodia gordonii, even though they are advertised as being an immediate and powerful suppressant for your appetite. And if the product does not contain hoodia gordonii, then it will have virtually no ability to suppress your hunger at all.
Let’s presume though that these supplements do actually contain genuine hoodia gordonii. I still believe that they would be ineffective as a method for controlling hunger and appetite because they would not contain the amounts of hoodia needed to trick the mind into believe you are full. As a general rule, hoodia gum products claim to have between 20-150mg of hoodia in each stick. This is still only a tiny amount, and would not be able to suppress your appetite.
Experts and doctors agree that in most cases to be an effective appetite suppressant a product must deliver about 3,000mg of hoodia gordonii each day. It’s true that some people can get away with taking as little as 800-1,500mg of hoodia per day, and still experience appetite suppression, but even if this is the case with you, you would still need to get through a number of packs of hoodia gum before you reached this level.
One final concern I have about all of these hoodia gum products is that the majority of them state that they were made using concentrates or extracts from the hoodia gordonii plant, and that these concentrates only contained the active ingredient P57. The problem with this is that the process of extracting this molecule has not yet been fine tuned and there is only one company in the world, called Phytopharm, who have the legal rights to do this.
This is a British medical company who are the exclusive holders of the patent for extracting the P57 molecule from the hoodia gordonii plant. However, even though they have spent the last several years and millions of pounds on researching this process, they have so far not been able to come up with a way to effectively extract P57 for use in weight loss products. I don’t see how these hoodia gum products can claim to be based on hoodia gordonii extract, when the process of creating that extract hasn’t even been properly developed.
At the end of the day I am still sceptical about hoodia gum products. I doubt they will be effective at controlling appetite because the vast majority of them will not contain any hoodia gordonii, and those that do will only have a very tiny amount. If you are still wanting to try hoodia gordonii though I would highly recommend that you stick with the established hoodia diet tablets.
