Hoodia And Anatrim Fact Or Fiction?

Copyright 2006 Jonni Good

Lately our email boxes have been filled with come-on's for a weight-loss product called Anatrim, which appears to contain (or claims to contain) extracts from the Hoodia gordonii plant, a suculent that grows naturally in South Africa.


The emails claim that Hoodia will help you lose weight without any unwanted side effects. There may be some truth to this claim about Hoodia itself, but the products that claim to contain Hoodia may not do you any good.

If you watched Leslie Stahl eat a bit of hoodia in the Kalihari Desert on 60 Minutes, you know that this plant may actually contain a compound that suppresses the appetite. However, the active ingredient in Hoodia gordonii is patented, and it is not legal at this time for any company to sell Hoodia in a weight loss product except for the patent's owner. That company isn't ready to sell Hoodia for weight loss, and probably will not have a product available until 2008.

However, there are products on the market at this time that claim to contain Hoodia, including the one called Anatrim. The hoodia patent owner, Phytopharm, claims that these products contain such a small amount of the active ingredient that they are essentially worthless.

Hoodia is a desert plant that grows sparsely in one of the most brutal environments on earth. It is highly unlikely that any of the companies now selling Hoodia weight loss products could ever pick or produce enough of the spiky little plants to fill all those bottles of weight loss pills. Phytopharm's own hoodia farm in South Africa looks sparse indeed, and these slow-growing succulents can't possibly yield high returns without many months of patient cultivation.

The real product, containing useful quantities of the active ingredient in hoodia, (and not just the word 'hoodia' on a label), should be on the market in 2008. With no side effects, no addiction, no heart racing, no deaths - this could be the 'miracle cure' that will cure the obesity epidemic. We just need to be patient.

Even if the Anatrim folks had found a fast and easy way to grow lots of Hoodia, and even if the product worked, (which may be doubtful), there's another reason to wait for the product from Phytopharm. This company has signed an agreement with the San people, who are the first to use the plant as an appetite suppressant, and on whose ancestral land the plant traditially grows. They will receive a portion of the profits from the sale of Hoodia products sold by Phytopharm.

The San of the Kalahari have been eating this cactus-like plant for centuries. The scarcity of food in the desert is the likely cause of the Bushman's thin figure, but an appetite-suppressing plant would have big advantages to people who must often do without food during times of scarcity. It is ironic that the same plant could now be offering a lifeline to a world suffering from too much food.

But does it work? Apparently it does. A study was done in 2001 for Phytopharm. The study included overweight but otherwise healthy volunteers using an extract of Hoodia gordonii. The study found that large doses of Hoodia gordonii extract caused a statistically significant reduction in the average daily calorie intake and a reduction in body fat content compared to the placebo group after two weeks.

So there we have it - it appears that Hoodia gordonii extract really does have the ability to reduce our appetites and help us lose excess fat, but the products currently claiming to contain Hoodia may be ineffective. We will have to wait until 2008 to see if the real MacCoy really works as promised.

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