Pursuits
This Cloth-Making Technology Is Turning Trees Into Noodles
- Japanese textile maker using rayon technology to make pasta
- Omikenshi joins Japan Paper seeking new lines in health foods
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Faced with tightening competition for the textiles it’s been making for almost 100 years, Omikenshi Co. is trying to get into the health-food business, using its cloth-making technology to turn trees into noodles.
The Osaka-based company’s best-selling product is rayon, a fiber made from tree pulp. Using a similar process, Omikenshi is turning the indigestible cellulose into a pulp that’s mixed with konjac, a yam-like plant grown in Japan. The resulting fiber-rich flour, which the company calls “cell-eat,” contains no gluten, fat and almost no carbohydrate. It has just 60 calories a kilogram (27 calories a pound), compared with 3,680 for wheat.