For the next few posts I will give an explanation of some of the ingredients of Crave, starting today with Hoodia.

Hoodia is a genus (organism) of 13 species in the flowering plant family Apocynaceae.  Coming from Africa, it can kill the appetite and attack obesity.

The San Bushmen of the Kalahari, one of the world's oldest and most primitive tribes, have been eating the Hoodia for thousands of years, to stave of hunger during long hunting trips.

When South African scientists were routinely testing it, they discovered the plant contained a previously unknown molecule, which has been christened P57.

Research on P57 show how it works:

There is a part of your brain, the hypothalamus. Within that mid-brain there are nerve cells that sense glucose sugar. When you eat, blood sugar goes up because of the food, these cells start firing and now you are full. What the Hoodia seems to contain is a molecule that is about 10,000 times as active as glucose.

It goes to the mid-brain and actually makes those nerve cells fire as if you were full. But you have not eaten. Nor do you want to eat.

When the first human clinical trial was conducted, a morbidly obese group of people were placed in a ''phase 1 unit'', a place as close to a prison as it gets. All the volunteers could do all day was read papers, watch television, and eat.

Half were given Hoodia, half placebo. Fifteen days later, the Hoodia group had reduced their calorie intake by 1000 a day. It was a stunning success.

The plant is said to have a feel-good almost aphrodisiac quality, and people who have tried it, say they have felt good afterwards.