Hoodia Diet
Can it be that the hoodia diet truly is the amazing Holy Grail discovered by the weight loss industry? Well, a lot of companies think so. The first UK company granted a license for the production of P57, the main ingredient of the hoodia diet, was Phytopharm PLC, who in turn have granted the rights to the production and distribution of hoodia diet products to other companies.
But why exactly has the hoodia diet become so popular?
If you aren't familiar with the origins of the hoodia plant used in the hoodia diet, then it might surprise you to know that this phenomenom of the weight loss world is actually a native of the Kalahari Desert in Southern Africa and was first used by the San Bushmen to help crave their hunger pangs on long journeys or when food was not readily available. The amazing properties of the hoodia plant lay undiscovered for hundreds of years until recent media coverage introduced the hoodia diet to a global audience and sent overweight people and the drug companies into a frenzy, desperate to get their hands on this amazing new weight loss supplement.
The first patent for the appetite supressing qualities of the hoodia diet plant went to the CSIR, or The South African Council for Scientific Industrial Research who, in 1997, granted a license to the UK company Phytopharm to produce and distribute hoodia diet products. But what of the original founders of this plant, the San Bushmen? In 2002, CSIR officially recognized the San tribespeople’s rights over Hoodia, allowing them to take a percentage of the profits and any spin-offs resulting from the marketing of Hoodia.
Despite the abundance of hoodia diet products being sold, some do not contain real hoodia diet ingredients because the active ingredient, P57 the appetite suppressant, has proven difficult to recreate in a laboratory. Pfizer, the pharmaceutical giant discovered this the hard way, after going into partnership with Phytopharm to reproduce the hoodia diet ingredient.
So, what has resulted from this shortage of the hoodia diet ingredient? Well, the only source now is the hoodia gordonii plants growing in their native Kalahari Desert sands and it has been reported that, despite vigorous regulations imposed by smany countries, large desert farms have sprung up in order to grow large quantities of the hoodia diet plant resulting in the sale of illegal hoodia diet plants.
Sales estimates for the hoodia diet ingredient have been reported as ranging from $550 million to $2 billion annually, and, with obesity fast becoming an epidemic in the western world, including the U.S. and the U.K, any company that has the facilities and know how to create this ingredient in bulk, both cheaply and quickly, is certain to grab an immediate advantage in the weight loss supplement market.
Obese and overweight people are desperately seeking that magic weight loss formula or pill, something that will easily and most effectively help them with their weight loss solution. Right now, that solution is the hoodia diet and the first company to crack the riddle of synthetically recreating hoodia diet products in the labarotory for the least cost and in the largest quantities can expect a massive demand for sales.