60 Minutes Report on Hoodia

Each year, people spend more than $40 billion on products designed to help them slim down. None of them seem to be working very well. Now along comes hoodia. Never heard of it? Soon it'll be tripping off your tongue, because hoodia is a natural substance that literally takes your appetite away. Recently, the CBS news show 60 Minutes looked into the hoodia phenomenon. Lesley Stahl was the anchorperson of the report.

Stahl visited a hoodia plantation. She went with Nigel Crawhall, an interpreter, who had Toppier Kruiper, a Bushman, in order to get to a farm in the Kalahari Desert. While she was there, she tried some hoodia, which she found “a little cucumbery in texture, but not bad.” Stahl said that she suffered no side effects, and she was not hungry for the next day, not even suffering hungry pangs when she normally would have.

Hoodia was first investigated in a survey of indigenous foods. When it was fed to animals, they lost weight. The Council for Scientific and Industrial Research took thirty years to find a new molecule, called P57, that was responsible for the hunger suppression. Eventually, the national lab decided to license the molecule's patent to Phytopharm, which has spent more than $20 million so far on research, including clinical trials with obese volunteers that have yielded promising results. Subjects given hoodia ended up eating about 1,000 calories a day less than those in the control group.

There are weight-loss products that claim to have hoodia in it. Trimspa says its X32 pills contain 75 mg of hoodia. The company is pushing its product with an ad campaign featuring Anna Nicole Smith, even though the FDA has notified Trimspa that it hasn't demonstrated that the product is safe. Some companies have even used the results of Phytopharm's clinical tests to market their products.

"This is just straightforward theft," says Dr. Richard Dixey, head of Phytopharm. "People are stealing data, which they haven't done, they've got no proper understanding of, and sticking on the bottle." Dixey continued, "When we have assayed these materials, they contain between 0.1 and 0.01 percent of the active ingredient claimed."

While there, they discussed the Bushmen. They are still stigmatized in South Africa, and plagued with high unemployment, little education, and lots of alcoholism. And now, it seemed they were about to be cut out of a potential windfall from hoodia. However, due to threat of court action, anyone that uses hoodia must give the Bushmen a royalty.

The future of hoodia is not yet a sure thing. The project hit a major snag last year. Pharmaceutical giant Pfizer, which had teamed up with Phytopharm, and funded much of the research, dropped out when making a pill out of the active ingredient seemed beyond reach, and they have been replaced by Unilever.

The only problem with hoodia is that it tastes bitter. Phytopharm told 60 Minutes that when its product gets to market, it will be certified safe and effective. They also promise that it'll taste good.