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Here is what Consumer Reports had to say re hoodia:

[No authors listed]
Hoodia: lose weight without feeling hungry?
Consum Rep. 2006 Mar;71(3):49. No abstract available.
PMID: 16544385

This article reports on Hoodia Supreme, a dietary supplement
of powdered
African cactus. When asked for support of their claims that
Hoodia users
experience dramatic appetite suppression, Natures Benefit,
which
manufactures the product, cited the San bushmen of South
Africa, who ate the
plant to control their hunger.

Helps "burn stored fat" when
combined with "diet and lifestyle
changes," and "research
shows dramatic appetite suppression."
So said radio ads for
Hoodia Supreme, a dietary supplement
costing $39.95 for 60
capsules of powdered African
cactus. When we asked for support
of those claims, the manufacturer,
Natures Benefit, cited
the San bushmen of South
Africa, who ate the plant to control
their hunger, as well as
animal experiments and a small,
unpublished clinical trial using
human volunteers.
In that 15-day trial, by
British rival Phytopharm, nine
people who took pills containing
P57, a possible active ingredient
in hoodia, consumed
fewer calories and lost more
body fat than those who took
dummy pills. But the findings,
announced in 2001, were never
published in a scientific journal,
and we know of only animal
research on hoodia that was
published there. The September
2004 issue of Brain Research
reported that injecting P57 into
the appetite center of rats'
brains altered levels of the
energy molecule ATP, which
may affect hunger. And the P57
group ate less than the rats
that received placebo injections.
CR's take: Given the very
scanty evidence that hoodia
works, and the even scantier evidence
that it's safe, particularly
for long-term use, we do not
recommend the use of hoodia-based
weight-loss products.