Biena Foods’ Roasted Chickpea Snacks

Founder Poorvi Patodia leaned on her South Asian heritage when she wanted to devise a healthy, filling, and, most importantly, delicious snack, incorporating chickpeas into her company’s finger food option. Bags sell for about $3, and come in a variety of flavors. In June, Biena even hit the healthy-food jackpot when the company’s products were picked up for regional distribution by Whole Foods.

The Cake Brigades

Chickpeas are cool (and healthy), but they’re no substitute for moist, cake-y joy. Fortunately, young cupcake connoisseurs are up to the task. Pipe Dream Cupcakes and Kickass Cupcakes both offer desserts on wheels, Rachel Raczka has a round up of other local establishments with Twinkie-based and Twinkie-inspired dishes.

Poppier Alternatives

Two young local companies, Mini Pops and Quinn Popcorn, also offer up lighter, healthier snacking options. Mini Pops are made with popped sorghum grain. The Globe previously highlighted Mini Pops while explaining what the mysterious mini-popcorn-lookalikes really are. Quinn Popcorn does use corn, but it cuts out all the bad parts of traditional microwavable popcorn: Chemical coatings on the bag, artificial ingredients, and preservatives.

Bite-sized Energy Boosters

But what about all the athletes who downed a pre-race Twinkie? Fortunately, entrepreneurs have created new options for them. Aeroshots offer up an air-based shot of powdered caffeine to get you going. It’s the logical step in between 5-Hour Energy shots and injectable 100-Hour Energy syringes. Below I’ve embedded video from when Scott Kirsner and Joe Allen-Black gave the shots a test drive earlier this year:

For the less adventurous, or more chocolate loving, there’s Perfect Fuel Chocolate, which offers small, specially-formulated chocolate bites. The bite-sized boosters were received favorably when founder Nicolas Warren pitched the idea to Kirsner and Rudina Seseri from Fairhaven Capital on Entrepreneurs Grill.