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  Hoodia on 60 Minutes

The only place hoodia grows wild is the South African Kalahari Desert. The 60 minutes team traveled to South Africa and into the bush meeting with Nigel Crawhall, a linguist/interpreter. Together they followed a tracker named Toppies Kruiper, who is a real aboriginal Bushman, to find and test Hoodia Gordonii. In the desert Stahl asked Toppies if he ate hoodia. "I eat these plants every day, especially when the new rains have come," says Kruiper, speaking through the interpreter. "Then they're quite helpful." They eventually found some wild hoodia growing, and he cut off a piece. It looked like a prickly pickle. They chewed about 5 ounces of the raw hoodie, and said it had a very bad taste. Stahl said she had no after effects, no aftertaste, no queasy stomach, and no racing heart, no hunger pains all day, even without eating for 18 hours. She also claimed she had no desire to eat or drink the entire day, and "I'd have to say it did work". Correspondent Lesley Stahl report says: Hoodia is a bad tasting cactus-like plant. 60 Minutes had to tarvel to South Africa to try Hoodia because at the time it could not be found anywhere else in the world. Nigel Crawhall, a linguist and interpreter, hired an experienced tracker named Toppies Kruiper, a local aboriginal Bushman, to help find some. Kruiper led 60 Minutes crews out into the desert, and Stahl asked him if he ate hoodia. "I really like to eat them all the time," says Kruiper, speaking through the interpreter. When we located the plant, Kruiper cut some hoodia that looked like a small spiky pickle, and removed the sharp spines. Stahl ate it and said "a little cucumbery in texture, a little bitter, but not bad." Stahl says she had no side effects, funny taste in her mouth, queasy stomach, or other feelings. She wasn't hungry the rest of the day. She had no interest in eating or drinking the entire day. "It did work," says Stahl. Although the West is just discovering hoodia, the Bushmen of the Kalahari have been eating hoodia for thousands of years. The first scientific investigation of hoodia was conducted at South Africa’s national laboratory. It was included in a study of indigenous foods. "What they found was when they fed it to animals, the animals ate it and lost weight," says Dr. Richard Dixey, who heads an English pharmaceutical company called Phytopharm that is trying to develop weight-loss products based on hoodia.