Archive for the 'Low Carb' Category

I heard somewhere that a whopping 70% of us Americans will go on a diet this year. And with all the choices in miracle weight loss plans available just in he supermarket check-out alone it's no wonder we get confused as to what will actually work. After all the goal is to lose weight healthfully and still satisfy our hunger, isn't it? So it isn't really surprising that most of us find it hard to stick to any of these plans, small portions, low-cal, low-fat, ow-carb, prepared foods, etc, and when we fail we take it hard. (we gain back what we lost and add a few more pounds for good measure)

I Did it my way

This website advocates losing weight by cutting back on bad carbs and the research backs us up, however, how YOU do it is up to you. I combined elements of the South Beach Diet and the Adkins Diet to lose weight and at the same time tried to watch my fat intake. It worked! The point is, I made up this diet myself. I used proven weight loss tricks but I personalized my own plan where I adapted each diet plan to fit my life, not the other way around. Check out ome of these proven strategies and choose ways to make them work for you.

Cutting Carbohydrates = Success

And by that I mean the bad ones, refined flour in the form of white bread, pasta and especially refined sugar. Did you ever stop to think how much sugar there is in all of our so-called low-fat foods? Just look at the labels and it becomes obvious, when a product removes the fat they have to add sugar to get the taste back - otherwise, no sale! All of these foods may taste good but they provide zero nutrition and empty calories. Learn to eat your way around them. Just avoiding one 20-ounce soda per day could translate into savings of 25 pounds or more over a year! Try the ones with Splenda, like RC Zero or my personal favorite, Diet Ocean Spray Cranberry Grape Juice with Splenda. Both have zero calories and zero carbs and they taste very good.

Eat Smart, Eat Well

Your body needs carbs for energy but if you eat the wrong ones your body just ends up storing them as fat. Eat smaller portions of good carbs like vegetables and whole grains. These will give you a satisfying feeling between meals and will steady your blood sugar. If you have to eat refined foods (like white bread) try to combine them with a food that has protein or healthy fat like lean meats or greens.

Eat to lose

That may sound like a gimmicky statement but it actually works, IF you know what to eat. I know that when I am hungry I need to eat. And I don't mean one of those wimpy diet meals that will have me sneaking into the fridge an hour later. I like to choose foods high in fiber and water content so that I can eat a lot, feel full and still lose weight. I eat a lot of salads. At first I found it hard to control the amount of salad dressing I used because I was using the low carb ones like Ranch and Oil & Vinegar. But even low carb dressing can defeat you by using too much. Here is a tip for you: dry your lettuce well with either a salad spinner or using paper towels, a tablespoon of salad dressing will then go a long way. My favorite is ranch but again, don't get carried away.

Add some bulk to every meal by adding high-volume foods like fruits and vegetables. If you are just starting out and you want to lose weight quickly in a short period of time try the Atkins two-week induction plan. Fruits are a no-no during this period but plan on adding them back in when you finish induction. A lot of fruits are high in carbs but they are good carbs, natural carbs. Atkins got a bad rap from his critics and competitors when he suggested a diet without fruit but read my lips: This was during induction only - he never meant to exclude them from a healthy eating regimen - ever.

Watch the Fat 

When I first started advocating both the South Beach Diet and The Atkins Diet people would say, "oh, thats the one that says it's ok to eat a pound of bacon for breakfast." Well, that's just ridiculous and it only goes to show you ignorant people can be. If you are interested in the facts, read the books. What I did that worked for me was to try to control my fat intake as well as my carb intake. Naturally I banned the bad carbs from my diet but all of those things that Atkins said were ok like butter, mayonnaise, olive oil, meats and seafoods, cheeses, eggs, etc, I cut back on too. It was scary at first, all the things that the low-fat bunch had drilled into my brain, but after I saw the weight loss and how good I felt, it all started making sense. I mixed low fat mayo with real mayo, I ate two strips of bacon for breakfast instead of four, I cut out bread and subbed Parmesan wafers, I kept the half&half for my coffee but cut it down, etc. Just use common sense and it will work for you as well. There is no other diet that will allow you to eat as much and as well as a low carb diet.

Men Concerned About Their Wives and Risk of Diabetes

I was speaking with some fellow veterans at the Carl T. Hayden Veterans Hospital in Phoenix the other day while I sat in the waiting room of the Agent Orange Registry. I was there for an examination that would tell me if I had or, were at risk for, type 2 diabetes, a disease now on the the list of associated nasty things that you can get as a result of exposure to high concentrates of Agent Orange (DDT- a defoliant) in Viet Nam. Anyway, as vets will do, we got to talking about our wives and what they were doing to lower their risk of diabetes and how a certain diet might help. All of the wives that were discussed were women ranging in age from 50 to 60 years old, having weight problems, and were on diets of some kind. It's a well-known fact that being overweight is the single largest contributor in causing the onset of type 2 diabetes. And, believe me, you do not want to get this disease!

Low-Carb or low-fat?

The discussion with my Viet Nam comrades resulted in a split decision, some were in favor of the low-carb diet and some were on the side of low-fat, with the consensus leaning (ha!) toward a low-fat approach. My wife cringes when she sees me eat a steak or bacon or cream cheese, regardless of my weight loss results because she has been conditioned to think that way by a multi-zillion dollar campaign to keep king sugar posting record profits. This includes glossy ads in magazines and TV commercials that promote low-fat foods or diets while showcasing the thin bodies and beautiful faces of those (18 year old) ladies among us, who represent less than 1% of the entire female population, paid to say they got that way by consuming a certain low-fat food. Pullease! 

Up on my Low-Carb Soapbox

Among my veteran colleagues there were advocates for both low-carb and low-fat approaches but before I could get up on my low-carb soapbox and enlighten them with all that I have learned about the low-carb nutritional approach to weight loss, I was called in to the doctor. When I came out my new friends had dispersed to examination rooms where the news was either good or bad. (in my case, I came out ok, whew!). I thought about it on the way home and got on the computer first thing. And voila!, right there in Healthday News was an article about those same concerns. Very illuminating, especially for woman who feel the need to reduce the amount of meat in their diet, and their concern they might be at risk for type 2 diabetes.

Low-Carb Wins!

It turns out that a diet low in carbs but high in animal fat and protein doesn't seem to increase the risk of type 2 diabetes in women, a new study claims. As a proponent of the low-carb approach I was happy to hear that because sugar and insulin spikes are the culprits here and low-fat diets are full of sugar! I agree that "one study is never enough to change a recommendation," but this study leads the way in pointing out the obvious, what us low carb advocates have known for years now; a low-fat diet is not the way to eat if you are concerned about preventing type 2 diabetes.

Low-Carb diets show protective effect against type 2 diabetes!

Author of the study, Thomas Halton, a recent graduate of the Harvard School of Public Health and founder of a nutrition consulting company called Fitness Plus, seemed to be a bit surprised that the one diet that did seem to show a protective effect against type 2 diabetes was a low-carb plan, one that advocates cutting out "bad" carbs like processed sugar and flour. Duh!, just because dieters the world over (nutritionists and doctors too!) have been brainwashed by all the low-fat propaganda out there doesn't mean that there aren't people in the know. It's just that no one wants to actually read Dr. Atkins or Dr. Agatson's books or if they do what is said in them is taken out of context, ridiculous comments like; the Adkins approach advocates not eating fruit or vegetables! Baloney, what has happened here is that the sugar people have done their jobs well, just go to any grocery store or even specialty "health food" stores and read the nutrition labels of their "low fat" products. Prepare to be amazed at the sky-high carbohydrate content - 99 percent of which is sugar! In order to make low-fat products palatable, food manufacturers have to add sugar when they take out the fat. No taste = no sale!

Protecting Yourself From Diabetes

Being overweight is not just a cosmetic problem, it's a major health problem around the world. Just in the US alone, two-thirds of adults weigh more than they ought. And, as the study in the current issue of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition points out, a  low-carb diet that minimizes bad carbs is a much better way to go than eating sugar-loaded, low-fat products. I love sugar as much as the next person and, as a matter of fact, have a serious sweet tooth. However, a low-fat cookie for example has more sugar per serving than a regular one. Go figure.

A Common Sense Approach to Dieting

The thing that has worked for me, after having read and studied both of the definitive books on the subject of low-carb dieting; Dr. Atkins New Diet Revolution and the South Beach Diet by Dr. Arthur Agatson, is a combination of low-carb and low-fat, meaning, have that juicy steak - but cut off the excess fat, enjoy your cream cheese - but on a stalk of celery, not a bagel, keep the bacon for breakfast - but limit it to two slices. Use common sense when faced with eating decisions. Keep track of what you don't eat and make a list of the (bad) carbs that didn't make it past your lips. At the end of a week use this formula to see the amount of weight gain you avoided. (this is only an approximation because of the differences in body structure from one person to another). I start the formula with a stern warning; one dessert consumed = 1 lb of weight gain, no matter the portion size. That's the bad news IF you should fall. But for each 100 grams of bad carbs you resist you can say you avoided a pound of weight gain. So, at the end of the week, if you lost 3 lbs and you resisted 300 bad carbohydrates, you can say you doubled your weight loss! It's just like resisting a sale, especially when you don't need the item that is discounted. Like my Dad always said (i know it's corny but I think of it often) "Son, if you want to double your money, fold it twice and put it back in your pocket."

The good news about Type 2 diabetes, which affects as many as 45 percent of women and 30 percent of men in the United States, is 75 percent preventable with the proper diet. (The other 25 percent is hereditary). And, while low-fat, high-carb diets are often recommended by doctors who treat diabetes, my feeling is that we have to minimize our carb consumption, especially the bad carbs found in processed foods (empty calories) and continue to promote the "good" carbs found in fruits and vegetables. You just have to find that fine line between weight stabilization or weight gained, usually determined by portion control.

The surprising thing about this study was not that saturated fat will have much less impact on insulin levels than whole grains (bread), cereal fiber or fruit and vegetables (which can heighten the risk of type 2 diabetes). Even if you don't follow Atkins or The South Beach Diet you may already have known that. We also know that even the good carbs found in fruits and vegetables are still carbs so we have to count them too. For the study referenced here, Halton and his colleagues examined the association between low-carb diets and the risk of diabetes among 85,059 women participating in the Nurse's Health Study. The data, which included 20+ years of follow-up research, also ranked women according to what they ate. "We calculated a low-carbohydrate diet score based on the women's percent consumption of fat, protein and carbohydrate," Halton explained. "A higher score reflected a higher intake of fat and protein with a lower intake of carbohydrate. Therefore, the higher a woman's score, the more closely she followed a low carb-diet, the lower her score, the more she followed a low-fat diet." Bottom line is; meat-eating women with a higher score did not have a heightened risk of diabetes. In fact, and this was the surprising find I alluded to earlier, they seemed to have a slightly decreased risk when they derived their fat and protein from vegetables (like avacados) rather than animal sources!

Low-Carb regimens that follow similar paths to those of the Atkins and South Beach Diets can be diets that include animal fat and  protein. Or they can be vegetable and fruit inclusive. The problem is that even though it's a "very good thing to do," most people don't know how to eat well. They don't bother to learn the differences between simple and complex carbohydrates and what's involved in maintaining a healthy and balanced diet. People go to extremes," said Dr. Stuart Weiss, a clinical assistant professor of medicine at New York University School of Medicine in New York City. "In general, carbs should be limited just like saturated fat needs to be limited. . . If you eat too much of anything, you're bound to get into trouble."

American Diabetes Association  

Care, Cure Commitment 

I thought I should pass on this interesting article I saw on MSN's website, Health & Fitness section that rates the sugar substitutes, the good, the bad and the so-called unacceptable. Written by Sylvia Geiger, M.S.,R.D., Eatingwell.com

In my opinion this article is not only a review of sugar substitues but a reassuring bit of information that helps to enlighten the public as to their options when it comes to FDA approved sweetners. A quote that appears in the article by Manfred Kroger, Ph.D., professor emeritus of food science at Penn State says it all for me. "The public should feel confident that any approved sweetener is truly safe and has been closely scrutinized." And it's not just me, most food scientists agree with that statement. That's comforting news for those of us who have been subjected to the cancer scares of aspertame - even though most are aware that you would have to consume buckets of this stuff daily to maybe get the big C. The sugar industry does what it can to mis-direct and mis-inform us about other sweetners that challenge their markets but from the looks of all the low fat foods out there that depend on sugar for taste I dont think sugar has much to worry about. But when I see some of the big guns out there like Coke and RC with labels that proclaim "sweetened with Splenda," it does my heart good.

Ms. Geiger goes on to talk about the fact that sales of "diet-friendly" sugar substitutes have gone through the roof, up a factor of 50% from 2000 to 2006 primarily because health experts are now recommending the use of them to their overweight and diabetic patients. A staggerting 66% of Americans are overweight and 20.8 million have diabetes. She mentions that according to a recent survey, seven out of 10 adults say they want to reduce or avoid added sugars. And in order to do this they are forsaking regular sugar for sweeteners that deliver zero or minimal calories. 

For me Splenda is the only choice for sweetning beverages both hot and cold, especially coffee. I am a sweet freak that has to have sweet in his life and Splenda does it for me. I have to use 10 times the amount of sugar to get the same sweetness and that is just unacceptable. Bottom line is it just depends on what you get used to and what you believe the experts like Sylvia Geiger have to say. I started using Splenda when I read about it in Dr. Atkins book, The New Diet Revolution. He recommended those sweetners like sucralose, not because he thought aspertame caused cancer but because it seemed to derail his patients efforts at the Induction phase of his low carb plan. They were not able to lose as much weight as quickly. Bottom line, read the article and decide what is best for you.

Scottish superstar golfer Colin Montgomery uses the Atkins low-carb nutritional approach to losing weight. This is not exactly a current story since Monty started the plan back in 04 when it seemed like everyone was trying it but it still has relevance here because most golfers know who he is and what he used to look like. Not only that but the fact that he has kept it off using the same plan would seem the bigger story here. I got this story from Jimmy Moore's Livin La Vida Low Carb Blog and he got it from the Glasgow Sunday Mail.

Monty was the guy that everyone loved to hate because he let everything and everyone on the course bother him, especially during Ryder Cup competition, and he was subsequently branded a whiner as a result of his constant complaining. Monty let his clubs do most of his talking and you would be hard pressed to find a guy with a better record in Ryder Cup play. Personally I think this is what rattled his drunken detractors (true golf fans would never be so rude) - he always found a way to beat us. But at some point over the last few years he suddenly became the darling of the US Tour whenever he showed up to play. This might have something to do with his record in the majors here (0 for a million) or his light and funny press conferences about how good a player Tiger is. At any rate the story in the British newspaper reported that he is a big fan of the Atkins lifestyle and has used it to slim down.

I didn't see the original story but Jimmy Moore (my low carb idol) says that it refers to Atkins as a "no-carb regime" (a fine example of a reporter too lazy to do his homework and I agree with Jimmy when he says - when will these people ever learn?!) It still had some great quotes from the man golfing fans (now) affectionately refer to as "Monty (more…)

If you have been away from low carb for a while or maybe even never bought into it in the first place I have good news! There are thousands of people out there that believe, like I do, that the controlled carbohydrate nutritional approach is the best way to lose weight. There are so many resources for great tasting food products out there that offer more variety, are better tasting and a heck of a lot better for you. Weight loss is about substitution, not about depriving yourself of the things you love like bread, pasta and, Heaven help me, sweets, my personal nemesis. Sugar was a staple in my life until I was able to find things that tasted just as good without it. And when I do need something sweet for my decaf coffee or low carb drink I reach for the Splenda!

The typical American diet is what makes you fat, especially if you buy into the low-fat lifestyle. The only way they can make low-fat food palatable is to add sugar. I am all for cutting out fat when I can but not by adding a ton of sugar to food. The best way to cut out fat on a low carb diet is to watch your portions, have two slices of bacon instead of four, 8 oz of meat instead of 12 or mix low-fat mayo with regular mayo for your salad dressings and dips.

If you don't believe me just take a cruise through your nearest health food store or even grocery store. Look at some of the low-fat products and read the Nutritional Facts on the back of the product label paying particular attention to the carbohydrate content. Prepare yourself for sugar shock because 99% of a products carbs are added sugar. Shoot, even a lousy one-cup serving of low-fat 2% milk has 13 grams of carbs and 12 of those grams are added sugar. If you are trying to watch your carbs this one cup of 2% low-fat milk will derail you. You are better off drinking cream!

I don't know about you but when I tried living the low-fat way all it did for me was make me tired, irritable and caused me to lose sleep. I also wondered why I was hungry all the time and why I couldn't resist eating even more sugar-laced "low-fat" products. Well, if you are a sugar slave like I was you don't need me to tell you that sugar begets sugar, meaning, the more you eat, the more you crave. 

Now I am able to eat sugar-free chocolate and actually enjoy it! Malitol, Sorbitol, Splenda and even Stevia have weaned me away from sugar and now I don't miss it at all. Don't believe it? Just visit Netrition.com, try a few things and you will be surprised. I lost 115 lbs doing this and, more importantly, have been able to keep it off. Stay tuned to this site for more ways to overcome those things that made you fail in the past. I am loving life right now every time I put my clothes on and I want you to feel this way too.

You may remember that low- carb dieting became a fad not too long ago and a bunch of us Americans jumped on the bandwagon, thinking this was another quick fix. In restaurants around the country it became trendy to order a hamburger without the bun or to ask for Splenda for your coffee. You might have tried low -carb yourself with some success but went back to your bad habits after losing a few pounds, possibly ending up with a few extra for good measure. This "fad" fizzled because most of us just don't have the staying power and because the low-fat crowd twisted the solid research behind this plan and convinced us that it was "unhealthy." Bullcarb!

I'm here to tell you that the Low-Carb movement is alive and well and is just as active as ever in trying to convert us Americans (who get fatter every day) to a more nutritional approach to eating and losing weight. I personally believe that a combination of the Atkins Low Carbohydrate Nutritional approach combined with aspects of the South Beach Diet AND a low-fat approach are the way to go. If this sounds like an oxymoron bear with me. I know what you THINK you have heard about fat not being a consideration with either Atkins or The South Beach folks - you know those people who just can't let go of their bad habits and start the Atkins diet with a pound of bacon a day!? This is simply a mis-conception and spin from the low-fat folks who support the sugar industry. Just go into any supposedly health food store and look at the low fat stuff. Its all LOADED with sugar. And to us metabolically challenged, processed sugar is our number one enemy! NO ONE, especially Atkins, advocates eating unlimited quantities of fat-loaded foods. PLEASE, if you are going to do this, READ THE BOOKS first, then get with your doctor and see if this approach is something that is safe for you.

If, like me, you can look back at the many diet plans you tried over the years you may recall how you felt when you found a plan where you actually started losing weight and your clothes started fitting better. There was this feeling of. WOW, I'm actually doing this and it's working. Remember that feeling of re-gaining your self esteem - feeling more in CONTROL? But, then after losing a few pounds and feeling cocky about it you gradually started re-introducing those very things that made you fat - and pretty soon, boom!, back to square one - or worse. This forum is about sustainable weight loss and how to achieve it. I want you to have that feeling of control and I want you to like yourself ALL the time. Don't accept that you are overweight and there is nothing you can do about it. Don't utter those awful words to yourself that kill any chance of a better life "well, I'm fat and that's what I am." Bullcarb!

BELLY FAT!  That's right, sports fans, this is the #1 cause of an out to in swing path which is a major contributor resulting in the dreaded slice. Forget open club face, forget angle of attack, forget reverse weight shift, it all boils down to an improper approach to the ball (out to in) and a big belly will cause it every time. It forces the club outside because you can clear your hips but you can't clear your belly. The flight of the ball tells all. I am just as guilty as anyone (by the way that's not me in the picture but it could have been just six short months ago). I decided I wanted to be a better player and my golf coach told me point blank I might as well learn to play the slice if I wasn't going to do anything about my weight. Well, my wife and doctor have been telling me this for years but hearing it from my golf pro is a wake up call if I ever heard one!

I asked my doc if I could try the low carb approach since I read that I could still eat steak, bacon, butter, mayo and some other stuff I could not imagine life without and he said, fine, as long as you can give up alcohol (temporarily, then only in moderation), bread, pasta and keep your fat intake moderate. In other words go ahead but don't think you can eat a pound of bacon for breakfast and three steaks for dinner! Thankfully my doctor is a fan of low carb and knows enough about it (he read the books!) so that he doesn't go off like the low fat crowd does, making people think that what Dr. Atkins advocates during the induction phase of his program is what he advocates eating forever. Of course he wants you to eat vegetables, of course he wants you to eat fruit, what moron would say otherwise? Just NOT in the induction phase of his plan which is the first two weeks to get you jump-started on the program. Dr. Atkins was a respected heart surgeon and he developed this program to get his overweight patients ready for heart surgery and the faster he could get the weight off the better their chances were of coming out of the surgery in good shape. (more…)

I keep washed and fresh celery in foil in the fridge to use as dipping scoops for this recipe or I use those terrific parmesan cheese wafers which satisfy the crunchy urge that seems to come over me frequently. This is a filling salad that can be inserted in a scooped-out tomato, set atop a bed of lettuce or eaten by itself.

Two large cans of Chicken of the Sea Albacore Tuna - drained

One can of Maria's quartered artichoke hearts - chopped

Five stalks of fresh celery - chopped or sliced to suit

Enough Mayo to suit your desired texture - remember Mayo is just about carb free and if you can stand the taste use low-fat Mayo

Salt & Pepper to taste

Dash of curry - less than quarter teaspoon

Teaspoon of Dill weed

Three hard boiled eggs - chopped

Finely shredded mozzarella cheese - about 1 cup

1/2 cup Macadamia nut pieces if desired

Mix all ingredients in a serving bowl that has a tight lid or a tupperware container so that you can munch on this later. If kept cold it will keep for 3-4 days without getting soggy or stale. If it has been sitting for a while stir with a fork to mix. Serving size is an ice cream scoop full containing less than 4 net carbs.

I found this interesting article in the December 29th issue of the Arizona Republic Newspaper; Kalahari's hoodia a darling of world dieting industry written by Robyn Dixon of the LA Times. It motivated me to add my comments in rebuttal to the ridiculous amount of buzz that this supposed new "diet wonder drug" is causing.

MARIENTAL, Namibia -

In the article Ms. Dixon describes a plant that she claims resembles something from the Day of the Triffids or some other science-fiction creation: a squat succulent with thick, spiky arms, purple fleshy petals and seedpods like rhino horns. But I liken it to Audrey II, the blood drinking monster plant from outer space that gave Rick Moranis so much grief in the hit movie; Little Shop of Horrors. FEED ME!

Hoodia Gordonii is no beauty, but this humble plant is Africa's latest cash crop, priced almost like a narcotic at $40. an ounce. The plant which grows wild in the Kalahari Desert of southern Africa, was once used by indigenous tribes to suppress hunger and thirst when hunting. Now, as Dixon points out, it's the darling of the international dieting industry and a search for the word nets about 14 million responses! Once again it seems that the overweight among us have discovered a new miracle pill that takes the place of balanced nutrition, self-control and exercise.

The "get rich quick at the expense of the fat and desperate" folks have found a new way to drink our blood just like Audrey II, a metaphor used to illustrate the money that people will spend in the hopes of finding that miracle pill, the one that you take right before bedtime so that you get thin while you sleep. The demand for hoodia is so great that supplies of the plant have been severely compromised, smuggling is rife and farmers in southern Africa are trying to cash in on the trend. One hoodia farmer, Dougal Bassingthwaighte calls it "an impossible phenomenon that is too good to be true." International giant Unilever is licensed to commercialize hoodia but world-wide demand is far outstripping supply and there is a mad race on to get plants to the market. Does anyone remember the old adage; if it's too good to be true, it usually is? But in the hopes that maybe this time there is a pill that really does what it claims, for some, all common sense goes out the window. Unfortunately for farmer Doug the plants that he is currently cultivating as of this writing (some 130,000 seedlings) will take two years before they can be harvested. By that time the "hoodia" being peddled on the internet will have caused a heart attack or stroke, the FDA will have issued a ban and the the entire South Afican agricultural industry will be shut down by a class-action law suit. Use of Hoodia will taper off as all fads do and the impatient dieters of world will move on to the next great get-thin-by-taking-a-pill miracle drug, leaving farmer Doug stuck with a million pounds of Audrey II look-alikes. FEED ME!

This explosion of interest has not only put enormous pressure on the rare plant, already listed as an endangered species by international treaty, it has also put intense pressure on an embyonic market that could be a boon for Africans if allowed to grow at a natural and sustainable pace. However, we all know that when the potential exists for obtaining great riches for no work;  scammers, theives and assorted others will allow NOTHING to grow at a natural and sustainable pace. I guess when all else fails they will have to revert back to the tried and true African method of making money; the Nigerian letter.

The craze seems to bring out the worst in people. The industry is rife with fierce competitive secrecy, quack products and illegal harvesting. A situation similar to the powder made from crushed rhino horn, supposedly an aphrodisiac and which has resulted in the tragic deaths of millions of rhinos whose hornless carcasses litter the African landscape. Next, authorities in South Africa fear, comes the inevitable interest of organized gangsters. Sorry guys, this has already happened. You know those spammers that clog up your email with anatrim and hoodia (as seen on Oprah!) spam where they promise you guaranteed results or your money back? Just what type of individuals do you think are behind this? And it's only a matter of time before hoodia farmers will have to hide and guard their crops like pot cultivators. Shipments of the plant will be hi-jacked by fellow Africans who are so poor that they will jump at the easy money offered by gangsters. It's going to get ugly out there and I would respectfully request that anyone receiving this type of email would be wise enough to know that there are no "quick fixes" for sustained and healthy weight loss and that they are only risking their health and their financial well being by supporting these people with purchases of this garbage. They should consign these offers to the trashcan where they belong. Our African friends have enough problems.

All of this fuss over a plant which has not yet been proven as a diet aid by scientific methods and that is still classified as one of grandma's home remedies. Pills and capsules claiming to contain hoodia are widely available in the United States online and at stores that sell herbal supplements and appear to be selling like hotcakes. Such products are exempt from U.S. Government regulations that require drugs to be tested for safety and effectiveness before being sold. Now I ask you, why anyone would want to ingest something that is untested and unproved is beyond me. I like to think that there are good reasons for testing the safety and effectiveness of our drugs before they are put on the shelves of our drugstores and pharmacies. If it isn't approved, it shouldn't be sold, period! It's bad enough when we have an approved drug that is accused of causing harmful side-effects like heart attacks and strokes. I could weigh 500 pounds and wouldn't try this stuff. Remember Phen Phen?

Our African farmer, Mr. Bassingthwaighte claims it works because as a kid he would take it while traveling to and from other farms and people told him to "eat this, it will take away your hunger and thirst." I remember as a kid that my Dad would blow smoke in my ear to ease the pain of an earache…and it worked! But how much the power of suggestion had to do with this I can only guess. It may well have worked for Doug but these days you never know what's in a capsule offered on the internet, why take the chance?

Ms Dixon has done her homework on this piece; there are three types of hoodia that contain the active ingredient P57: hoodia gordonii, the most common, which has a bitter taste; the similar-looking hoodia currorii; and hoodia officianalis, a smaller and rarer plant, preferred by indigenous Namibian tribes because it tastes sweeter. Farmer Bassingthwaighte sees the last as having potential as an organically farmed salad vegetable. I can see it now, pre-washed bags of hoodia salad in my favorite produce department or health food store! But wouldn't they be cutting their own throats by offering this item, nobody would buy any other food! When will people wake up and find that hunger suppression is unhealthy? It's one thing for an African traveling by water buffalo to visit a cousin in a neighboring tribe due to having insufficient supplies of food and water and totally another for a person that lives in the land of plenty to take it because they can't control their urge to gorge on fast food.

South Africa's Council for Scientific and Industrial Research isolated and identified P57 and patented it in 1996, later licensing British firm Phytofarm to develop and commercialize it. The council argues that anyone who sells hoodia as a weight-reduction product outside their license would be infringing on their patent. Do you think that internet scammers give a hoot about patent infringement? Ha! All this means is that theoretically, those that buy this stuff can be busted.

In 1998, Pfizer signed a deal to develop the product but withdrew in 2003; a year later Unilever entered a licensing deal with Phytofarm. Under legal pressure from lawyers representing the San tribesman, Phytofarm later signed a royalty deal with them. Once again I must emphasize that scammers interested in the fast buck could care less about infringing on a royalty agreement or any other deal.

South Africa is the only African country exporting hoodia legally. Paul Gildenhuys of the Western Cape Conservation Authority said that the amount of hoodia exported to Europe and the U.S. under permit from that province more than doubled in the past year from 22 tons to 49 tons, raising suspicions that significant smuggling was going on. Duh! He said that there were reports of hoodia flowing through Western Cape province from other parts of South Africa or other countries. "The problem with the industry is that people are all trying to get their piece of the (hoodia) cake," he said.

The moral of this story is that there are no "miracle pills" out there that can take the place of nutritional alternatives to losing weight healthfully without the need to revert to unproven stuff like hoodia and anatrim while enriching the pockets of scammers. Our preferred method of sustained and healthy weight loss is the low carbohydrate nutritional approach. Programs like the South Beach and Atkins diets have been clinically proven to be safe and effective and more importantly; legal. $40. an ounce will buy a lot of healthy and great tasting low carb foods that will help you lose weight and satisfy your hunger - why would anyone waste this kind of money on an unproven and potentially dangerous shortcut? Check out the resources available to you via this website and others that support the low carb lifestyle.