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When surfing the Internet for hoodia gordonii, you may have read there is a hoodia Oprah connection. You may have seen websites that claim Oprah uses hoodia, or that she has endorsed a particular hoodia product on her show. Would it surprise you to hear that these statements may not be true?

I have not been able to prove there is a hoodia Oprah connection. I have been to Oprah’s website and searched for “hoodia Oprah”, as well as just plain “hoodia,” and no results were found for either. I have never read anything that proves Oprah has used hoodia, or that she has featured it on her show. Until I find evidence that tells me different, I don’t believe that there is a hoodia Oprah connection.

I will say there is a minor connection to hoodia in Oprah’s magazine, O. The websites that claim Oprah uses hoodia point to an article, “Diet Pills: The Next Generation,” that ran in O’s July 2005 issue. The magazine was hard to locate, but I managed to find one on eBay and purchased it. I wanted to find out exactly what Oprah said about hoodia. The article was very surprising.

The article features a picture of a San tribe member with a hoodia gordonii plant. My first thought was there probably is a hoodia Oprah, but after reading the article it was not connected to Oprah at all. In fact, the article was written by someone other than Oprah and there are no quotes from Oprah about hoodia in the entire piece.

The article opens with the first two paragraphs briefly talking about the history of hoodia and the popularity of hoodia diet pills. However, the article doesn’t talk very highly of hoodia supplements. In fact, here is a direct quote from the article, “So far, however, there’s little proof that the supplements are even mildly effective: Most contain only small, probably insignificant levels of Hoodia extract” This is hardly a ringing endorsement for hoodia supplements - let alone a specific brand of hoodia!

The article goes on to inform the reader that pharmaceutical firms are still trying to come up with the latest and greatest weight loss supplement. Beyond the first two paragraphs, there is no mention of hoodia at all. As far as Oprah’s magazine is concerned, there is no hoodia Oprah connection.

With so many websites using Oprah’s name to make consumers believe there is a hoodia Oprah connection, there is bound to be some legal actions taken in the future. Oprah’s legal department will no doubt come down on these people. They are twisting a small mention of hoodia in an article in Oprah’s magazine to make it appear that Oprah herself endorses their brand of hoodia, when in all honesty, that is just not true.

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