What You Should Know About the Hoodia 60 Minutes and BBC Reports
I’ve been researching and writing about hoodia supplements for over a year now and I can’t believe I haven’t written an article about hoodia, 60 minutes, and the BBC reports. What sparked my interest in finally writing this story was because I was fed up with all the bogus 60 minutes and BBC endorsements of specific hoodia diet pills.
It is all too common to see the words, “Endorsed by” or “As featured on” and then see the CBS 60 Minutes logo and the BBC logo on websites that are promoting or selling hoodia supplements. This makes people who are shopping for hoodia supplements believe that the products on these websites have been endorsed by 60 Minutes and the BBC. The truth is these two media companies never mentioned a specific hoodia diet pill, tested or endorsed one.
60 minutes did do a hoodia story on November 21, 2004. Reporter, Leslie Stahl, went to the Kalahari Desert in South Africa to see the hoodia gordonii plant growing in the wild. She wanted to eat a small piece of it herself to see if it affected her appetite. After eating the plant, Stahl reported the hoodia gordonii plant worked to suppress her appetite and she wasn’t hungry the entire day.
Leslie Stahl said nothing else about hoodia. She, and 60 Minutes, did not mention any specific brands of hoodia supplements, let alone endorse one. However, unless you read the show’s transcripts or watched it yourself when it aired on CBS, you wouldn’t know this. Hoodia sellers have taken the 60 Minutes show and twisted the facts around in an attempt to sell more of their hoodia supplements.
In regards to the BBC, they did a documentary on hoodia in 2003. BBC correspondent, Tom Mangold, also took a trip to the Kalahari Desert to test the hoodia gordonii plant on his own appetite. Mangold and his camera man both took a small piece of the hoodia plant and ate it. They both reported they, “did not even think about food” for the remainder of the day. What was even more amazing about their report was they said they weren’t hungry for breakfast the following day and their appetite at lunch was still virtually nonexistent.
As before with the hoodia 60 minutes report, the BBC did not test a specific hoodia supplement, or endorse one. All that Stahl and Mangold did was test the plant directly to get a first hand report on whether the plant controlled their appetites. Neither journalist endorsed or tested a particular hoodia supplement.
Any website that is trying to sell their hoodia product by claiming it was seen on 60 Minutes or the BBC is lying. As you can see, the hoodia 60 minutes and BBC reports have been misrepresented. Any company that has to be dishonest to sell their products shouldn’t be trusted. It makes me wonder what else they are exaggerating or out right lying about to make a sell?