Shopping for hoodia online can easily make you think that there is a hoodia Oprah connection. Some websites claim that Oprah endorses and uses hoodia. Some go so far as to claim that Oprah uses their brand of hoodia. The truth is I don’t believe there is any hoodia Oprah connection.
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 first two paragraphs of the article discussed the history of the plant and its popularity in the weight loss industry. Yet, the article in O didn’t speak very favorably of hoodia weight loss supplements and said, “So far, however, there’s little proof that the supplements are even mildly effective: Most contain only small, probably insignificant levels of Hoodia extract” If anything, if I didn’t know better, this article would make me doubt the benefits of hoodia gordonii supplements, though no brand was mentioned.
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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