In 1980 FILM The Gods Must Be Crazy, San Bushman in the Kalahari Desert stumbles over a bottle of Coke that was tossed from a passing plane. Experience introduces the San to the modern world, warts and all. Today, the San of southern Africa are sharing something of their world with the West - a prickly, cucumber-like plant called hoodia gordonii - pronounced hoo-dee-uh gore-doh-no. In San eat hoodia to suppress their appetite for long desert treks. And then someone has a clear idea of what, if it works in the desert-dwelling Aboriginals as San, it might be just the medicine for pudgy North American bank potatoes, try to avoid in the past liter Häagen-Dazs. As a result hoodia suddenly one of the hottest trends diet to achieve favourable weight loss scene with promoters, such as Anna Nicole Smith, the former Playboy Playmate of the Year and dubious cultural icon, who shills for the hoodia-based pill called Hoodia Gordonii Plus. The fluctuations corpulence clearly established, Smith said she lost 70 pounds using capsules. But nobody knows if the hoodia really works.

On the Canadian Health Food Association trade show in Vancouver in April, hoodia was "certainly in the top five of what is promoted as the next Holy Grail", "notes Allison McCutcheon, a botanist medicine at the University of British Columbia. What makes the So popular at the moment is the unmistakable hint of credibility. Were in San around forever. They know of course that a thing or two about indigenous plants. "Tam such ethnobotany hoodia behind, which some reason to think maybe there is something here" McCutcheon Gezegd . "On the other hand, if I look at the science, I am surprised at the nature of the progress being made with Hoodia Diet Pills."