I’ve written several articles about fake hoodia products but I never mentioned the reasons. It seems ridiculous that companies around the world could ever sell diet pills that contain no Hoodia Gordonii when they claim it as an ingredient.
When there’s money to be made fooling people, you can bet someone will step up to the plate and start selling poor hoodia imitations.
Here are the top 5 reasons why there are counterfeit Hoodia Gordonii products:
- 1. Media attention and popularity including the BBC, The Today Show, Oprah, and more have covered the appetite suppressing effects of pure Hoodia Gordonii, which lead to the great demand. When there’s great demand, there’s limited supply, fraudulent products will inevitably flood the market. This is basically one of the reasons why there’s so many frauds out in the market.
- 2. Hoodia Gordonii is a very rare plant that grows natively only in South Africa. The plant takes 3-5 years to reach maturity. This also limits the supply.
- 3. There are many kinds of hoodia plant, but only the Hoodia Gordonii species has the weight loss active ingredient – P57.
- 4. Pure hoodia is a protected plant and is governed by international law. Hoodia CITES certificate is needed in order to legally export it out of South Africa. This permit limits the supply further for those in the Western world.
- 5. Pure hoodia is not regulated by the FDA, thus no testing is required for the products to hit the shelves or for it to be sold online.
Remember also not to focus online when searching for Hoodia. You should be careful of purchasing even in retail outlets such as health food stores, supplement sellers and others.
The good news on hoodia is that there are known sources for acquiring the real thing, and there are packaged supplements available right now that contain 100% genuine South African Hoodia Gordonii.
