Healthy snacks with chai: 7 options that are not biscuits

In Pakistan, healthy eating usually survives breakfast and lunch and then collapses at five o'clock, because chai without something to eat is unthinkable and the something is nearly always a biscuit, a rusk or a samosa. Here are seven that go with tea and do not undo your day.

Granola Pop, straight from the jar

1. Roasted chana

The original healthy chai snack: cheap, high in protein and fibre, and available on every corner. Buy the plain roasted kind, not the coated one. More ideas in our list of high protein snacks in Pakistan.

2. Makhana (fox nuts)

Dry-roasted in a pan with a pinch of salt and chaat masala, makhana is light, crunchy and almost impossible to overeat. Two minutes of work.

One Dark Chocolate Almond date with chai

3. A chocolate stuffed date

When you want something sweet with chai, one date beats one biscuit every time: natural sweetness, fibre, and it feels like a treat. Our Dark Chocolate Almond Crunch is about 70 calories a piece, with a roasted almond inside and dark chocolate outside, and one is genuinely enough.

Real clusters: oats, roasted almonds and seeds, baked with honey

4. Granola clusters

A small handful of granola eaten dry does exactly what a biscuit does next to a cup of tea, with almonds and oats instead of refined flour. Keep a jar of Nutty Honey Crunch by the kettle.

5. Fruit chaat

Whatever is in season, cubed, with a squeeze of lemon and chaat masala. Takes five minutes and the whole table eats it.

6. Peanuts in the shell

Winter's answer. Shelling them slows you down, which is half the point.

7. Cheese on a rice cake

Not very desi, but it works: a slice of cheddar on a plain rice cake with black pepper is salty, filling and ready in thirty seconds.

The one rule

Put the snack in a small bowl, not the packet on the table. Most chai-time damage is not the snack, it is the second and third helping taken without noticing.