Hop extract for weight management takes up to 10% of hop crop
Only one of 1000 plant extracts tested triggered the appetite hormone, and it came from hops.
|October 22, 2026Listen to the full interview:
A weight management product made from Motueka-grown hops is now using between 7% and 10% of New Zealand’s hop crop.
Calocurb chief executive Sarah Kennedy says the extract triggers the release of the body’s own GLP-1, an appetite-suppressing hormone.
“It’s not a byproduct, we’re contracting the growers,” she says.
She says the science came from Plant & Food Research, now the Bioeconomy Science Institute, after 16 years of research and a $20 million government grant.
She says Calocurb’s fourth human clinical trial, of 150 people, showed 5.4% weight loss over six months, all of it fat.
“I bring a royalty back to New Zealand, so on every sale I make, that royalty comes back to New Zealand.”
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