Adventures of
Chocolate Girl:
Gnosis Masters the Art of Healthy Decadence
By Kat Schuett
When Vanessa Barg, a certified holistic health counselor, first started coach- ing people on how to improve their diets, there was one plea that she would hear time and again: “I’ll give up anything else… soda, muffins, whatever,
but pleeeese don’t take away my chocolate.”
While cacao is high in antioxidants as well as phenethylamine and
anandamide—chemicals we naturally produce when we are happy—Barg
couldn’t condone the refined sugar and empty calories found in the
existing chocolate confections her clients craved.
So Barg, a.k.a. Chocolate Girl, then just 23 years old, donned her cape (or
apron) and started making the “healthiest chocolate in the world” out of her
small New York kitchen—grinding raw organic cacao beans in her coffee
maker and mixing it by hand with healing herbs and superfoods.
Word spread, and what began as a gift to motivate
clients turned into a business a few months later when a
store in Brooklyn called saying customers were requesting
“Vanessa’s Chocolate.” Working through the night,
Gnosis Chocolate—a name that means “in-
tuitive knowledge, knowledge of the heart.”
With Gnosis, Barg has successfully merged
the seemingly mutually exclusive worlds of decadence and health,
bringing to market raw, organic, vegan, diabetic-friendly chocolates that boast so many
good-for-you ingredients they make broccoli blush...yet your taste buds tell you it’s still a sinful
indulgence. Today, Barg’s healthy creations sit among the world’s best on the “Fine Chocolate”
shelves of the Food Emporium and Gnosis has its own section at select Whole Foods. Team Gno-
sis’s chocolatier, trained by Valrhona in Paris and the former chocolatier at NYC’s acclaimed Per
Se restaurant, was just named one of Dessert Professional’s Top 10 Chocolatiers in America.
