Tokyo

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 fibre 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 fibre-rich flour, which the company calls "cell-eat," contains no gluten, fat and almost no carbohydrate. It has just 60 calories a kilogramme, compared with 3,680 for wheat.