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Drop the word ``hoodia'' into any popular online search engine and you'll be treated to a smorgasbord of Web sites hailing a ``miracle cactus'' from South Africa that can change your life by tricking your brain into thinking your stomach is full.
Such claims are questioned by some experts, and have drawn the scrutiny of regulators.
But there's a source here in southern Arizona who says he's got the real thing, and he's hoping to ride the hype into a solid business venture.
Frank Fletcher, president of Arizona Hoodia, is an unlikely diet-industry guru: At 66, he's spent most of his life as an electrical contractor and engineer. He lives on a plot of land in Elgin, near Sonoita, in a house he's remodeling himself.
He spends several hours each day tending the Hoodia gordonii plants that he says grossed him about $80,000 in supplement sales last year.
``Eating the plant really does a number to make you not hungry,'' said Fletcher, who says he uses the product sporadically himself.
The bulk of Fletcher's operation is set up ``on the other side of Gila Bend'' from where he lives, in desert that doesn't get as cold in wintertime.
He won't divulge the actual whereabouts for security reasons, but he says he has about 7,500 mature plants there that he harvests in the fall and sends out to a vitamin manufacturer to be put into capsule form.
He sells the capsules - which he says contain nothing but ground hoodia - through his Web site, at prices ranging from $57 for 100 gelcaps to $425 for 1,000.
Hoodia became a buzzword on many dieters' lips almost overnight a little more than two years ago, when CBS newswoman Leslie Stahl traveled to South Africa to record a segment on hoodia for a November 2004 segment of ``60 Minutes.''
A bushman led Stahl and her crew into the Kalahari Desert to locate a hoodia plant, and when they found one, she ate a piece.
Later, she reported that she'd had no desire to eat or drink all day and that she had no side effects - no queasy stomach or racing heart.
A phenomenon was born.
Fletcher, however, was toying with hoodia long before Stahl's famous trip.
He was on a five-hour airplane ride about nine years ago, he says, when the Israeli gentleman beside him would not stop talking about something called ``hoodia.''
On and on the man went, talking about this plant that makes people think they've already eaten. For five hours, Fletcher listened to it.
By the end of the flight, Fletcher's curiosity was aroused. He gave the guy $100 and said to send him some seeds.
Then he forgot about it until a package showed up from Israel a couple of months later. It contained a single hoodia plant and some seeds.
Fletcher put the plant in his kitchen window and began learning how to tend it. He planted seeds and began learning about them as well.
A year later, he had 30 plants, he says. It became sort of a hobby that he now hopes to parlay into a full-fledged business.
Though it's hard to find bad press about hoodia, not everyone is convinced that using it is a great idea.
Melanie Hingle, a University of Arizona graduate student who does research on obesity for the Department of Nutritional Sciences, questions the wisdom of going without food for long periods of time.
Even if hoodia does work the way people say it does, she said, ``What do you do when you start eating again?''
She's not aware of any scientific studies to support or debunk claims about hoodia, which is a big reason she can't endorse it, she said.
``It's a quick fix, and ultimately people who want to lose weight need to be more physically active and watch their portion sizes with food, and not pop a pill,'' Hingle said.
There's also an element of consumer caution that should come into play with any weight-loss supplement, she said.
The vast majority of weight-loss pills marketed in the United States are marketed as ``diet supplements'' so they don't have to get approval from the Food and Drug Administration, she said.
Because they are not regulated, these supplements can have almost anything in them, and in hoodia's case they can have some hoodia, a lot of hoodia or none at all, Hingle said.
The FDA does, however, monitor claims made by supplement companies.
As recently as November, the agency sent letters to Internet hoodia distributors letting them know the claims they were making - such as that their products ``attack obesity'' - could be classified as selling an unlicensed drug because the distributors are claiming to treat a disease.
Source: knx1070.com |
