The hoodia gordonii plant has been known to the Bushmen of the Kalahari Desert for thousands of years. As they lived, hunted and traveled through the arid desert, they ate a bit of the plant as a food substitute. This plant works amazingly well as a food substitute in the desert region because it kills one’s desire to eat or drink anything. This is extremely useful in the desert where both food and water are extremely scarce and difficult to carry around.

The hoodia gordonii plant is considered to be a cactus because it looks like one. In fact, it isn’t a cactus at all. It’s a succulent plant that grows in the Kalahari Desert. It belongs to the genus Trichocaulon (family name – Asclepiadaceae.) Hoodia gordonii grows in clumps of green stems that grow upright.

It takes about five years for hoodia gordonii’s pale purple flowers to appear. The plant can only be harvested after the appearance of these flowers. The texture of the plant is like a cucumber, according to Leslie Stahl, a correspondent with the TV show 60 Minutes. She traveled all the way to Africa to try out hoodia.

The amazing appetite suppressing ability of the hoodia gordonii plant comes from a single active ingredient which was isolated in South Africa’s national laboratory, the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) by a group of scientists. It was called p57. Although there are around 13 varieties of the hoodia plant, only hoodia gordonii has this ingredient.

Attempts have been made to produce this ingredient synthetically (notably by Pfizer), but the cost of doing so is prohibitive and the project was abandoned. Currently, the british pharmaceuticals company Phytopharm holds the license for hoodia gordonii.

One of the good products out there that use the power of the cactus to help people lose weight is Hoodia Gordonii Plus. If you want to lose weight, it’s something you should check out.