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Japanese Company Makes Low-Calorie Noodles Out of Wood

Posted by timothy on from the anything-that-makes-cellulose-digestible dept.

AmiMoJo writes: Omikenshi Co, an Osaka based cloth manufacturer best known for rayon, a fibre made from tree pulp, is expanding into the health food business. 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, no fat and almost no carbohydrate. It has just 60 calories a kilogram, compared with 3,680 for wheat.

18 of 159 comments (clear)

  1. What is the food value? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    It sounds mostly like indigestible filler

    Kinda like this story!

    Heyooooooo

  2. Woodles? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    That is all.

  3. Next up: Stone candy. by ffkom · · Score: 2

    How insanely orthorectic the world has become! Seriously, the very purpose of food is to supply energy to the body. If you don't want to supply energy, chew a gum or suck some stone candy. Neither this nor the noodle surrogate will trick your body to think it has been supplied with enough energy.

    1. Re:Next up: Stone candy. by DRJlaw · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Neither this nor the noodle surrogate will trick your body to think it has been supplied with enough energy.

      Not the point. The point is to reduce the energy density of the food while, hopefully, retaining most of its other characteristics.

      Your body does not instantly know when you've ingested enough calories to be satiated. If your food is highly energy dense, it is easy to overshoot. If you have to actually eat for 15-30 minutes to get enough calories for your meal, the odds are far better that you'll feel full after consuming the appropriate amount of calories rather than the double-whammy-megablast that is that second quarter-pounder with cheese.

    2. Re:Next up: Stone candy. by ffkom · · Score: 4, Insightful

      If your food is highly energy dense, it is easy to overshoot.

      It doesn't matter if you "overshoot", as it just means there will be a longer time until you get hungry. The human body is way more precise in long-term energy intake regulation than any bean-counting diet can ever be. Just have a look at groups of people who diet mostly on energy-dense food, like those on ketogenic diets or ethnic groups eating mostly fatty fish and whale meat etc. - those sure don't have an obesity epidemic because of that.

      Combine artificial food with an artificial avoidance of motion, and you are much more likely to become obese.

      These artificial noodles are as useless to fight obesity as are artificial sweeteners and "fat-substitutes" in dairy products.

    3. Re:Next up: Stone candy. by Layzej · · Score: 5, Informative

      The Germans apparently ate sawdust during WW1: The foul black bread that was served was known as kriegsbrot, which translates to war bread. The recipe is quoted from the records of the German food providing ministry published in Berlin in 1941 was "50% bruised rye grain, 20% sliced sugar beets, 20% tree flour (sawdust), 10% minced leaves and straw" - https://books.google.ca/books?...

    4. Re:Next up: Stone candy. by pla · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I agree with you in spirit, but disagree in terms of basic caloric intake.

      Once we have the ability to create tasty foods with effectively no caloric value, it doesn't matter how much our bodies tell us to eat. We can only hold so much worthless food at a time. If we can literally gorge ourselves on near-zero calorie foods, we will have solved obesity, simple as that.

      I do have to wonder how our bodies will rebel against this latest way to eat-without-eating, but strictly in terms of energy-budgets, this seems like a win/win.

    5. Re:Next up: Stone candy. by Vermonter · · Score: 2

      Don't forget boredom... I find boredom is the biggest reason I eat when I'm not really hungry.

    6. Re:Next up: Stone candy. by jandersen · · Score: 2

      If we can literally gorge ourselves on near-zero calorie foods, we will have solved obesity, simple as that.

      Probably not. Research has shown that when we eat artificial sweetener, the tongue (as well as taste receptors in our gut) sends signals to prepare the body to process the incoming sugar, resulting in certain reactions (increased insulin production, other things); when no sugar turns up, the body begins to adjust to the fact that sugar taste doesn't mean sugar: the body becomes 'sugar-blind' in effect.

      I think in order to overcome the obesity crisis, we should go the other way: we should try to become more sensitive to what calories we consume, not less. Otherwise we end up in the situation we see in the US, where people seem to be obscessed with overconsumption on an epic scale. Breaking out of an obscession like that is not easy, I know, but it is possible. However, to do so, it is probably essential to stay away from foods that lie about their calory content. So: eat sugar, butter, meat etc, but only eat a little. Learn to enjoy feeling hungry from time to time - it isn't dangerous.

    7. Re:Next up: Stone candy. by Fross · · Score: 4, Informative

      I'm afraid this isn't quite correct and you've got a lot of common fallacies in this.

      Satiety is not a function of calorie intake. While not 100% understood the two strongest indicators we know of are a hormone released on consumption of protein, and the amount of material in the stomach. E.g. "In one study of 38 common foods, both men and women subjects consumed foods with equal calorie contents and their feelings of fullness were recorded every 15 minutes for 2 hours. Highest satiating power was found with high levels of protein, dietary fibre and water and low satiating power was related to higher fat foods." http://www.eufic.org/article/e...

      "Overshooting" with energy dense foods is not regulated well by the human body - the obesity epidemic is extremely obvious evidence of this. You try to attribute this to "artificial food" but that is a very weak strawman - it's the (relatively) recent availability of extremely energy dense foods such as refined sugar, flour, HFCS with high taste appeal and low satiety that cause the issues.

      The groups of people on "energy dense food" you mention are actually predominantly on high protein foods, which control satiety well as above. While it is possible to become obese on it it is unlikely in the real world as they are predominantly poor ethnic groups, or people with a vested interest in their diet. The obese are people on true energy dense foods (high carbohydrate and high fat) - it is a lot easier to eat 4000 calories a day of cakes than on a carb free diet.

      It's obvious that food to humans in the first world is not just a matter of "supplying energy to the body" as you state, people eat for pleasure, and energy-dense foods contribute to obesity by being exceptionally rewarding to the palate to most people. Exercise is a contributing factor but secondary - you can't outrun a bad diet.

      These noodles will help people to cut out energy dense material within their diet, and will therefore help obesity all other things being equal. Of course it's not as good as portion control, sensible diet choices and moderate exercise, but the obese aren't doing these anyway.

  4. Wow by Stewie241 · · Score: 5, Funny

    Who wood have thought?

  5. Famine by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    These sorts of technologies always remind me of famine from Good Omens (By Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman )
    "
    CHOW^TM contained spun, plaited, and woven protein molecules, capped and coded, carefully designed to be ignored by even the most ravenous digestive tract enzymes; no-cal sweeteners; mineral oils replacing vegetable oils; fibrous materials, colourings, and flavourings. The end result was a foodstuff almost indistinguishable from any other except for two things. Firstly, the price, which was slightly higher, and secondly, the nutritional content, which was roughly equivalent to that of a Sony Walkman.
    "

  6. Re:Old news by U2xhc2hkb3QgU3Vja3M · · Score: 4, Funny

    Pro tip: remove the pizza from the corrugated cardboard box it comes in.

  7. Re:So, Wood Filler by Sowelu · · Score: 2

    Same reason people drink diet soda.

  8. Cinnamon by Crowd+Computing · · Score: 3, Interesting

    The Germans apparently ate sawdust during WW1: The foul black bread that was served was known as kriegsbrot, which translates to war bread. The recipe is quoted from the records of the German food providing ministry published in Berlin in 1941 was "50% bruised rye grain, 20% sliced sugar beets, 20% tree flour (sawdust), 10% minced leaves and straw" - https://books.google.ca/books?...

    What about cinnamon? Woodn't that qualify as wood food too? Definitely more natural than eating shoes or drinking socks tea.

  9. Low calorie noodles already exist by DrXym · · Score: 4, Informative
    This stuff already exists - noodles made from konjac flour and oat fibre. It's gluten free, low calorie etc.

    I have no idea what it tastes like because its ludicrously expensive. Holland and Barrett sell quite a few brands of it. Most are packaged in watery bags which suggests the noodles themselves are saturated with water and lose their cohesion if they're allowed to dry out.

  10. Re:This one wierd trick... by 3.5+stripes · · Score: 2

    2 X 4 more likely..

    --


    He tried to kill me with a forklift!
  11. Re: Gluten Free First Post by Coren22 · · Score: 2

    As far as I recall, from looking at pictures of him, APK is a very large guy. You perhaps shouldn't mix "not fat" with "APK".

    --
    APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?