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The South African Hoodia Gordonii Cactus Hoodia Gordonii is a cactus-like plant and part of the plant family Apocynaceae. They are stem succulents that look similar to a cucumber that can reach up to 1 meter in height. Hoodia presents exuberant flesh colored flowers that give off a very strong and unpleasant odor. It thrives in extremely high temperatures in the high deserts of the Kalahari in South Africa. Although there are other species of Hoodia, the Gordonii is the only one that contains the appetite-suppressing molecule. The San (Kung) Bushmen of the Kalahari, one of the world's oldest and most primitive tribes, had been eating the Hoodia for thousands of years to stave off hunger and thirst during long hunting trips. Besides alleviating hunger and thirst, Hoodia also provides a state of alertness but without the jittery feeling produced by the current Western diet remedy of ephedrine, stacked with caffeine. “I learned how to eat it from my forefathers," said one member of the San tribe, a people who live in the Kalahari Desert, as he prepared a piece of the cactus-like plant called Hoodia by trimming off the prickly spikes. "It is my food, my water, and also a medicine for me." "Hoodia stops hunger and also treats sickness," Steenkamp told ABCNEWS. "We, San, use the plant during hunting to fight off the pain of hunger and thirst." The San (Kung) Bushmen can trace their heritage back more than 27,000 years based on rock paintings and are one of the world's oldest and most primitive tribes, and they have known about the properties of Hoodia Gordonii for thousands of years. All-natural products cannot be patented in any pure form. Nor can their names be trademarked. Now drug firms are tapping into the San knowledge, and are hoping to make a fortune by developing the Hoodia plant into a miracle slimming pill for millions of overweight Americans and Europeans. The irony that some of the world's most overfed people may benefit from some of the hungriest was not lost on the San. "At first people here were a bit shocked," said Nigel Crawhall, a professor at the South African San Institute and a campaigner for the rights of indigenous tribes. "Why would anybody want to lose weight by eating the Hoodia plant? Because it's meant for when you're traveling across the desert and you don't have enough to eat. So we thought it was a bit weird." A tribe of hunter-gatherers whose 27,000-year-old culture was recently close to extinction, the San people could now have found the ultimate survival weapon in their reliance on Hoodia. All Text Copyright © Safety2005.org |
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