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BBC 2 Television
Friday, 30 May, 2003, 09:56 GMT 10:56 UK
Sampling the Kalahari cactus diet - Extract
The San bushmen have eaten the plant for years
Correspondent's Tom Mangold travelled to Africa and sampled the appetite
suppressingHoodia, a plant which may make Kalahari bushmen millionaires.
By Tom Mangold
BBC Two's Correspondent
Imagine this: an
organic pill that kills the appetite and attacks obesity
.
It has no known side-effects, and contains a molecule that fools your brain
into believing you are full. Deep inside the African Kalahari desert, grows
an ugly cactus called the Hoodia. It thrives in extremely high temperatures,
and takes years to mature. The San 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 during long hunting trips. When
South African scientists were routinely testing it, they discovered the
plant contained a previously unknown molecule, which has since been
christened P 57.
Blood sugar "When you eat, your blood sugar goes up because of the food
content, & cells start firing when you are full. "What the Hoodia seems to
contain is a miracle molecule that is about 10,000 times as active as
glucose.
Clinical trials Laboratory trials for Hoodia were first conducted on Rats, a
species that will eat literally anything, but when fed Hoodia they stopped
eating completely. In order to see for ourselves, we drove into the desert,
four hours north of Capetown in search of the cactus.
’At about 1800hrs I ate about half a banana size - and later so did my
cameraman. Soon after, we began the four hour drive back to Capetown. The
plant is said to have a feel-good almost aphrodisiac quality, and I have to
say, we felt good. But more significantly, we did not even think about food.
Our brains really were telling us we were full. It was a magnificent
deception. Dinner time came and went. We reached our hotel at about midnight
and went to bed without food. And the next day, neither of us wanted nor ate
breakfast. I ate lunch but without appetite and very little pleasure.
Partial then full appetite returned slowly after 24 hours
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