Hoodia Article - What you need to know about hoodia gordonii.
 

Learn the differences in strength and potency claims.

If you've looked online for hoodia, you've probably seen it all: 100% pure hoodia, 20:1 hoodia extract, hoodia concentrate. Knowing the 3 ways of making hoodia will help you understand the various claims:

a) Making a powder out of the whole hoodia plant -- these are the products that say their hoodia product is "100% pure". The whole hoodia plant is ground into a powder. They claim that Bushmen ate the whole hoodia plant, and argue it's therefore the most effective way. However, Bushmen actually peel away the hoodia skin and discard it, they don't actually eat the entire hoodia gordonii plant. This is the cheapest type of hoodia to manufacture.

b) Using alcohol to concentrate it -- these are the 20:1 or 10:1 extracts. The idea here is that there is other stuff in hoodia, like the fiber and skin, that just takes up room in the capsule. So the hoodia plant is placed in alcohol, which "pulls out" the active ingredients into the alcohol. This mixture is then strained to remove the fiber and skins. The alcohol is removed, leaving the hoodia gordonii powder.

20:1 means that 1g of this extract was made by using 20g of the whole plant. It's considered more potent than the powdered whole plant (type a). Source Naturals and Flora are two established companies that use a 20:1 extract. Paradise Herbs uses a 10:1 extract for their hoodia, meaning that 10g of the whole plant were used to make 1g of their extract.

c) Using a method to specially extract the p57 molecule -- only Phytopharm and its partners can do this because of the p57 patent. People often ask, "if the p57 molecule is patented, why are there so many hoodia products sold on the market?"

Phillip Jones, in his "Overview of United States Patent Law", says "…a naturally occurring molecule cannot be patented even if the patent applicant was the first to discover the existence of the molecule. On the other hand, a purified, isolated or altered form of a naturally occurring molecule may be patentable."

Because p57 naturally occurs in the hoodia gordonii plant, there is presumably some of it in the other two ways of making hoodia (type a and b). But according to Jones' description, only Phytopharm and its partners can use methods to specifically extract p57 from hoodia or make hoodia pills.

Hoodia Article References:
Jones, Phillip. Overview of United States Patent Law http://www2.ari.net/foley/patentov.html