My guest today is “Chocolate Girl” Vanessa Barg, founder of Gnosis Chocolate. We’ll be talking about chocolate, of course, how to choose the best chocolate for good health, and Vanessa’s unique chocolate creations. A Certified Holistic Health Counselor who has studied with Andrew Weil, Deepak Chopra, and David Wolfe, Vanessa created Gnosis Chocolate in 2008 at the green age of 23 years old to help her clients experience the joy of conscious nutrition. Gnosis now imports from Indonesia and exports to Japan – it’s a worldwide brand. She directs, product development, sourcing, marketing, operations, and just about every other element of the brand herself. “Yes, it’s a lot of time and energy,” she says, “but if you love what you do, you’ll never work a day in your life.” www.gnosischocolate.com Use promo code “toxicfree10” for 10 percent off your purchase.
TOXIC FREE TALK RADIO
The Healthiest Chocolate I Could Find
Host: Debra Lynn Dadd
Guest: Vanessa Barg
Date of Broadcast: June 05, 2014
DEBRA: Hi, I’m Debra Lynn Dadd, and this is Toxic Free Talk Radio, where we talk about how to thrive in a toxic world, and live toxic-free because there are a lot of toxic chemicals out there in the world, every place we look, every place we go, unless we are doing something intentionally to be aware of them and remove them from our lives.
There are many products that don’t have toxic stuff in them. There are many places that we can go and have a respite from toxic exposure. You can create your own home to be an oasis away from toxic chemicals. You can even remove toxic chemicals from your body, and you can take nutrition products and foods that support your body in detox.
So there’s a lot that you can do, and that’s what we talk about on this show.
Today is Thursday, June 5, 2014, and I’m here in Clearwater, Florida.
Today, we are going to talk about chocolate, one of my favorite subjects. I love chocolate. But there is so much that could be wrong with chocolate.
If you just go to the store and buy a chocolate bar, there are so many toxic chemicals that could be in them in various ways.
We’re going to talk about those. But we’re also going to be talking about how to choose the best chocolate.
My guest today actually makes some of the least toxic, most delicious chocolate that I’ve ever found.
She’s called the Chocolate Girl. Her name is Vanessa Barg, and she’s the founder of Gnosis Chocolate.
Hi, Vanessa.
VANESSA BARG: Hi, Debra. Thank you so much for having me on this show. I’m truly honored.
DEBRA: Thank you. Thank you so much for being on the show. I met Vanessa last fall at the Natural Food Expo in Baltimore. And her products just really stood out for me so much because she really is taking a whole different approach to chocolate.
But before we talk about what she has to offer, Vanessa, just tell us how you got interested in chocolate.
VANESSA BARG: Oh, my goodness. I don’t know when my interests possibly have begun. Definitely, in the womb, I think. I’ve always loved chocolate since I was a child.
But I was studying at the Institute for Integrative Nutrition in 2006. This is the largest and most incredible nutrition school. They teach 40 different dietary theories.
So I was studying nutrition, health counseling, and just overall well-being, and I had clients who, of course, loved chocolate. And they could really easily let go of their cookies, their cakes, soda and things like that. But they said, “No, don’t take away my chocolate.”
And I knew at that point super food is when each calorie contains more nutrients than your average food.
So cacao really came into a different light for me when studying at Integrative Nutrition, David Wolfe came to lecture, and David is really the world’s
leading authority on super foods and detox about cacao. And when I finished that class, I went straight to Westerly Natural Market, which is my favorite market here in New York City, and I bought a pound of straight cacao beans.
I’d never had them before. I ate an entire pound of raw cacao beans, and I was just fine because cacao beans contain so many neurotransmitters.
Oh, my goodness.
So that’s when another level of love—my life was fully chocolate-addicted to that point.
DEBRA: I hate a cocoa nib. I just ate one because I remember many, many years ago when I first started being aware of all this stuff, I didn’t want to eat sugar. And so I bought just regular, unsweetened baking chocolate.
That was so bitter. I just couldn’t eat it. But at that time, we didn’t have all those other sweeteners that we have now today, so when cocoa nibs came on the market, and what that is just a crushed cocoa bean without being processed or anything.
So when cocoa nibs became available, I thought this is going to be really bitter-like chocolate. But it isn’t. It actually is very edible because it’s much gentler than baking chocolate. It hasn’t been processed.
And so this is really just chocolate in its natural raw form.
But I just took a little, tiny nib. And if you haven’t seen them, they’re very small, maybe an eighth of an inch. And it was just like I had drunk 10 cups of coffee. They’re so powerful.
VANESSA BARG: They are. And you know what’s actually really exciting. It’s actually an urban myth that chocolate contains caffeine.
DEBRA: Tell us about that.
VANESSA BARG: Yes. A whole bar of Gnosis Chocolate contains less caffeine than an entire cup of decaffeinated coffee. In fact, it has very, very little caffeine. What it does contain is a sister molecule to caffeine called theobromine. It’s in the same family called methylxantines.
They test for the whole family, methylxantines. And because cacao contains a methylxantine, and they just group it in as caffeine. They call it caffeine but it’s actually not. And theobromine is very, very different in that it affects your cardiovascular system, not your nervous system, like caffeine.
So whereas caffeine will give you the jitters, theobromine will actually activate your heart and circulation. And so it will give you that kind of boost of energy, but not the nervous, kind of, jittery kind.
And that’s one very common misconception about chocolates that I’d love to bust through this call because it’s just incredible the difference when you know that. And so it’s great to use chocolate as a medicine in that it will strengthen your heart amongst many, many other health benefits.
But you’re absolutely right in that most chocolates are incredibly-processed but the raw cacao bean.
The definition of raw food is when it’s not heated above 118-degrees. And so raw cacao is so different and it’s much gentler. It is still on the bitter side of the palate, but what I really think is interesting to think about this food is bitter greens and bitter beans.
Bitter foods are actually very, very healthy for us. If you think about a little bit of bitter greens, it’s on the more bitter side of the palate, but that’s actually medicine.
DEBRA: I think that’s right. Go ahead.
VANESSA BARG: If you look into the history of medicine, if you’re looking into whether it’s ayurvedic medicine or Chinese medicine, […] bitter foods. And so it’s interesting to see as our society becomes and more aware of toxicity of sugars and overconsumption of sugars, we’re starting to lean more towards the bitter side.
Just the cacao percentage, people are trying to appreciate that darker, more complex flavor profile.
I actually love to sprinkle cacao nibs right onto my salad, and go sweet, and go savory with it.
DEBRA: You can. We have so much to talk about, about chocolate. But let’s just say this right now. There’s a spectrum of chocolate—chocolate in different forms. So let’s start with the cacao bean, and that gets crushed to a cocoa nib.
And then where do we go from there? What are the different forms?
VANESSA BARG: When I started making chocolate, there were some brands of raw cacao available in the market, but primarily, it’s just either the bean or the paste. And that really all that was available at the time.
So we’ve come a really, really long way since then, as more chocolate manufacturers have come out.
But when you take the cacao bean out of the cacao pod, the fresh pod, then you ferment that and you dry them in the sun, and you’re left with the cacao beans. And that gets crushed into the nib, and the nib is also—you’re not just crushing, you’re also removing the shell as well.
And then you take those, and what we do is we put them into a granite stone grinder. And so slowly, over time, many, many hours of slow-grinding, that will become a paste because botanically, the cacao bean is actually a nut. So it’s like with any kind of nut butter. It comes very smooth and rich, and it’s amazing.
So when you have that cacao paste, or what some companies will call cacao liquor, and just the cacao bean without anything added, and so you can take that and do a couple of things with it.
Either you can, at that point, add your sweetener. We use primarily coconut sugar, which is a wonderful low-glycemic sweetener from coconut flower.
DEBRA: I’m going to stop you right there, in mid-sentence, because we need to go to break. And when we come back, we’ll hear the rest of the story.
I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. And my guest today is Vanessa Barg, founder of Gnosis Chocolate. And wait until you taste this chocolate. It tastes totally different than anything you’ve evertasted.
But we’ll be right back and hear more about the story of chocolate.
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd, and my guest today is Chocolate Girl, Vanessa Barg, founder of Gnosis Chocolate. And you can go to her website at GnosisChocolate.com. That’s G-N-O-S-I-S chocolate.
Vanessa, before you go on with your story, tell us what Gnosis means.
VANESSA BARG: Gnosis is actually a Greek word which means knowledge. And in modern day English, it means knowledge of the heart and intuitive knowledge, experienced knowledge, that wisdom that you learn over the course of your life through your trials and your tribulations.
When I started the company, I thought that was such a powerful word for today’s time because we can learn so much from our experiences, and then to open our hearts, and bring that to the world. And so that was perfect for a chocolate company.
DEBRA: I think it’s perfect too.
So what happens next in the process of chocolate?
VANESSA BARG: So after you ground the cacao nibs into a smooth paste or liquor, you can take that and you can either put it into, what’s called the butter press. That will eventually press out the sap from the paste.
If you think about having a nut butter, and if you let it sit for a while, the oils will separate out. So that’s what a butter press does. It presses those oils out. And that oil is cacao butter, and it solidifies at room temperature. It’s actually stearic, palmitic and oleic acids.
So rather your unhealthy, saturated fats, these are very healthy saturated fats, the kind that you would find in avocado and walnut and coconut.
So you separate that out, and what you’re left with is cacao powder. And so that powder is just really concentrated cacao solid. It’s where most of the nutrients can be found in a cacao.
If you want to just get a straight shot of all of the nutrients and all the antioxidants in a cacao bean, you could take that cacao powder and it’s really, really important to find cacao powder that is not alkalized. You see that Dutch-processed, and that is that they’ve added toxins to it, and you do not want to have that. It doesn’t taste nearly as good.
And it’s really, really important to find raw cacao powder. And truly raw cacao powder is actually difficult to find because there’s no real definition legally for the use of the word raw. And so there are a lot of companies that are selling “raw cacao powder,” but in that butter-pressing process, the machine often will get above 200-degrees. There’s just so much pressure that is required.
I’ve visited a few different cacao factories to try and find truly raw cacao, and the only one who actually built their own butter press—that you have to really modify the machine quite a bit in order to make sure that it stays under 118-degrees. And the only company who is doing that is actually called Big Tree Farms, and they’re located in Indonesia, in Bali.
It’s an amazing company, truly high-integrity, completely transparent. You can go and you can visit them if you’re ever in Bali. It’s BigTreeFarms.com.
And that is our source for both the coconut sugar, as well as for the truly raw cacao.
And so that’s the process if you want to make raw cacao powder and butter. But if you’re making chocolate and you want to leave the cacao butter in, so that you have that creaminess, you take that cacao paste and just grind in your coconut sugar.
That’s what we do. We’re using coconut sugar, which the nectar that comes from the flowers of the coconut tree. And it is truly the world’s most amazing, sustainable sweetener. It’s low-glycemic, about 35 on the glycemic index. And it has proteins, it has so many minerals, and it’s just amazing.
And the flavor, it’s not like your Stevia, which is another wonderful sweetener that we do use. But the coconut sugar is one-to-one with cane sugar in its sweetness, and has a beautiful maple and caramel flavor.
That’s what we do as we grind in that coconut sugar, and you’re left with the world’s most nutritious chocolate.
DEBRA: I really have to say that of all the sweeteners I’ve ever tried, and I think I’ve tried every sweetener there is, I think that coconut sugar is the most wonderful tasting sugar, and it’s low-glycemic. And it pairs perfectly with chocolate. It adds a richness to the chocolate that white sugar doesn’t.
And I think that that’s part of what gives your chocolate its unique flavor because it has the gentleness of the cacao bean, the raw cacao bean. And then it has that warmth of the coconut sugar.
When I first tasted it, oh, my god.
VANESSA BARG: That’s the best reaction I can ever hope for.
DEBRA: It’s different from any other chocolate because I’ve looked at a lot of chocolates. You have everything from the most toxic chocolate which would be pesticides. It wouldn’t be organic, and it wouldn’t be raw, and it would have refined white sugar in it, and artificial flavors.
And so then what happens is that people go to another step, and they say, “Well, we’re going to make it organic.”
And so it’s made from organic chocolate, organic sugar and organic soy lecithin. And it’s still got stuff in it, but it’s all organic.
And you have taken all those things out. Instead of saying, “I’m going to take things out of the toxic chocolate,” you just started with a bean, and said, “How are we going to make this as close to just the bean as possible and make it palatable and healthy?”
VANESSA BARG: And that’s what taking things out. One of the things that I’m really, really just in love with about cacao is that it is an amazing transport for medicinal herbs because as I mentioned earlier, cacao is a vaso dilator, so it helps with circulation.
What that means is it can help deliver nutrients to your system in a much more fast and efficient way.
So what we do is not only take the things out of chocolate that you find in your conventional bar with, like you said, all these toxins in it, not adding those in. But what we’re actually doing is infusing the chocolate with herbs from traditional Chinese medicine, from ayurvedic medicine, from South
American and Native American medicines.
And so we’re actually infusing this chocolate with things that will be beneficial for your health, not only leaving out the things that are bad for your health.
DEBRA: And we’re going to talk more about that when we come back from the break. This is Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd, and my guest today is Chocolate Girl, Vanessa Barg, founder of Gnosis Chocolate. That’s GnosisChocolate.com, G-N-O-S-I-S chocolate dot com.
And we’ll be right back.
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd, and my guest today is Chocolate Girl, Vanessa Barg, founder of Gnosis Chocolate. And that’s at GnosisChocolate.com.
So Vanessa, let’s talk about your chocolates. The first thing I want to ask you about is the sweeteners. You have a page here about sweeteners that you use, and I see that you’ve included coconut sugar, which we’ve talked about, and also Stevia, and also agave nectar.
I would like to ask you about agave nectar because it says here that you visited your source of agave, and that you read a report about it. So what did you find?
VANESSA BARG: Back in, I think, 2010, we were using agave nectar. And that was our only sweetener at the time. When I launched the company, there was no chocolate on the marketplace that did not contain sugar, or maltitol, or something synthetic. So this was really the first chocolate on the market that had low-glycemic sweetener.
Agave nectar was the only thing that was available at the time. And it was heralded. Everyone loved it.
And then Dr. Mercola, who has a really, really wide reach, and a really amazing website, and a lot of information that he brings about health and wellness, and a lot of controversial information, he came out with a newsletter that stated that agave nectar is as bad as high fructose corn syrup.
And just that headline alone, it made a lot of ripples across the industry. And of course, once you read something like that, you’re going to doubt your sweetener that everyone was using. It was really exciting for people to have that, and then all of a sudden, it was the devil.
DEBRA: I remember that.
VANESSA BARG: Being a health counselor, I really did not start this company to build a product company. I had no interest in making a lot of profit by having a chocolate company. It was really meant as a tool within my health counseling practice.
And so when I heard that, I said, on learning the truth, if this was the case, then I would either find a new sweetener or stop making chocolate.
There was no way that I was going to use cane sugar, and I certainly wasn’t going to use anything that was as bad as high fructose corn syrup.
Within a matter of days, I went down to Guadalajara, the Jalisco region in Mexico, which is where most agave comes from. I went down there and took part in the entire process from the farm, where I harvested pina, and took that agave plant through the entire process, where they removed the water, and heated it at an actually very low temperature, but at high pressure, so that the water would evaporate out of the agave nectar, leaving a syrup without heating it above 118-degrees.
And they did not add any of the toxins that Dr. Mercola had spoken of in this newsletter. And we did a whole lot of testing on that final product. And the only reason why we continue to use it in some of our products is because I know that our specific source is very, very high integrity.
So I wrote a report about this, probably six pages long. It’s got photos on it, and it’s called The Agave Report. If you search for that, you’ll find a lot of really interesting information.
DEBRA: It’s right here at the bottom of the page, yes.
When I started recommending agave—some years ago, I had a blog that was just about sweeteners because at that time, these were all these new natural sweeteners coming on the market, and agave was one of them. The description of agave was that it was the sap of this plant, and cooked down like maple syrup. And it was great.
It’s great to use agave. It’s such a good alternative to sugar, in terms of using it and how it tastes. It was like maple syrup except it was a different plant. That sounded fine to me.
And then all this other information started going around, and I was trying to find out, did that apply to all agave? Was it only certain agave? Were things being mislabeled? Were they being processed differently?
And it’s such a good idea, but I never ended up getting the answers. I didn’t get on a plane and go down and check out all the agave plants. I didn’t have funding to do that.
So all I had to go on was what other people said. So I’m glad to hear this from you. I know that you’re talking about your specific agave, and not all agave. But I do think that agave is a viable idea. We just need to make sure that the agaves we’re purchasing, whichever ones they are, actually are produced the way yours are produced.
VANESSA BARG: Exactly. And I think that when you really look at what the complaints are about the agave nectar and the high amount of fructose in it, you immediately start to think of the high fructose corn syrup toxin because it really is incredibly toxic.
But then if we all realize like, “Oh, fructose can be found in all fruits and in most vegetables.” It is a natural substance.
And so it’s just about moderating how much you’re using. Some people do eat all fruit. There are people who are fruitarians. But if you’re putting a little bit of agave nectar in a bar of chocolate, then you have all that fiber and you have the rest of the product.
We’re not talking about guzzling a bottle of agave nectar, but you really wouldn’t want to do that with any sweetener or any ingredients.
DEBRA: No, you wouldn’t want to do that. But a little bit in context, I think that all concentrated sweeteners that you need to look at how much you’re eating. I know that there are some food blogs where they just put agave in everything like it’s water.
VANESSA BARG: Yes, exactly. And Dr. Mercola did actually revise his statement, and I have a link to that revision where he said, “Well, a little bit is fine.” So if you’re having a tablespoon or two, that’s fine.
It’s very sad actually, having been there and met the farmers. Seeing how much really was invested, and providing for the U.S. market. It was really booming, and then all of a sudden, the support stops. And yes, you can still find agave in a lot of products, but it fell out of grace.
And it’s just really sad to see all of this investment. They really put a lot of hard work into it.
I still do use the agave nectar in some of our products, not many, just because, really, coconut sugar is just so much superior in that it has not only that one-to-one with sugar in the sweetness and the great flavor, but it also is very nutrient-dense.
And that’s one thing that agave doesn’t necessarily have. It has the sweetness and slightly less glycemic than coconut sugar. It’s around 25, 27, whereas coconut sugar has about 35. But really, cane sugar is in the 60’s. So they’re both amazing sweeteners and I really love to use them.
DEBRA: Good. Well, we need to take another break, and when we come back, we want to hear all about your fabulous chocolates. This is Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd, and my guest today is Chocolate Girl, Vanessa Barg, founder of Gnosis Chocolate, GnosisChocolate.com.
And we’ll be right back.
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd, and my guest today is Chocolate Girl, Vanessa Barg, founder of Gnosis Chocolate.
Vanessa, where do you want to start talking about your chocolates? I’ve got them all sitting on my desk here.
VANESSA BARG: What do you have sitting down on your desk? We can talk about those.
DEBRA: I have truffles. I have chocolate bars. I have raw trail mix. I have chocolate elixir, which I mix with some grass-fed cream. Oh, my god. It’s so good. And I have this little jar. I didn’t see this on your website, but it’s a little jar of cashew butter with cashew and coconut sugar and coco.
Do you sell this? I didn’t see it on the site. This is so good.
VANESSA BARG: That is actually a brand new product. You’re really the first person to receive that. I’m really excited about it.
Just like we take the cacao beans and grind them with the coconut sugar, we also take nuts like cashews, pecans, walnuts, and we grind those with the coconut sugar to make the most incredible spreads, something that we’re about to launch on the website soon.
People could sign up for our newsletter if they want to learn more about that. We’ll be launching it in a couple of days. I’m really, really excited about those.
For breakfast, a lot of people don’t know what to eat. People used to have toast. What do you spread on it that’s going to be healthy and that doesn’t have sugar because pretty much every […]
DEBRA: There is that famous nut spread that everybody […]
And it’s full of sugar. It’s just full of just processed white sugar.
VANESSA BARG: And other stuff.
DEBRA: So if people are in love with that and want to try something else, your new product is going to be a good thing. Even all the big peanut butter companies are now coming out with their own versions of this, but yours is the healthiest, obviously.
It’s obviously a popular thing.
I’ll tell you that you sent me this box with all these chocolates in it, and that was the first thing I tasted. I looked at the jar, and I went, “Oh, open this.”
VANESSA BARG: It’s really, really good.
DEBRA: Also, tell us about the truffles. Those are featured on your homepage.
VANESSA BARG: The truffles are extraordinary. I think these actually are the world’s only, I believe, raw truffles that have a shell and a different cream filling. And so everything is 100% raw and sweetened with a coconut sugar. And we add medicinal herbs to them.
So the Vitality Truffle Collection is something that we launched in the spring, and we are just closing out for the summer time. When it gets too hot, we stop making them. But we have four different flavors in that truffle collection.
They’re all infused with herbs for detox and for cleansing. So it’s not just the amazingness of a creamy filling and this amazing 70% dark chocolate on the outside. But we’ve actually got functional truffles.
They’re some of my favorite products that we produce. The way we make the cream filling is by using that nut butter.
We make them all through the holidays, so we’ve got a pumpkin spice flavor. We have CinnaPecan truffle. For Valentine’s Day, we do four different flavors. We’ve got passion fruit. We’ve got an aphrodisiac truffle with raspberries.
You can do so much with truffles. You can put a couple of layers. And they’re just incredible. Every single truffles that we make has medicinal herbs in them. So we have some that are good for the immune system.
I try to time it so the flavor and the functionality of the truffle will support your health and wellbeing and vitality through each season.
DEBRA: Excellent idea. And I noticed when I bit into the truffle, I thought, “Oh, this seems like a nut butter,” but it was so much smoother than nut butter, like if you buy peanut butter, cashew butter or something.
VANESSA BARG: It’s just the amount of time. We’re very, very patient with it. And it takes hours and hours and hours of very slow grinding to get that consistency. And also, rather than using some palm oil, which is really bad for the environment, and to the flora and fauna. Most of it is done in very unsustainable ways. We want to try to avoid palm oil in most cases, or using soy bean oil, or some other weird vegetable oil.
We’re using cacao butter as the oil. So it’s really [good]. It’s amazing.
DEBRA: Instead of biting into a chocolate and having all that super sweet goo come out, it was nice to bite into a chocolate and know that I was getting some nourishment inside. It was just really lovely to do that.
When I eat your chocolate, I feel supported instead of like I’m doing something bad for my body.
VANESSA BARG: And that’s so important.
DEBRA: It is.
VANESSA BARG: When I was first making these, I found that my clients were feeling very guilty about their love for chocolate. And this was six years ago, well, actually seven years ago, when I first started making the chocolate. It was just so sad to see people have this love/hate relationship with themselves.
It’s like, “Oh, I’m going to indulge in something but feel bad about it.”
And that dynamic really is unhealthy in our society.
And I think that one of the best things about making really functional, healthy, nourishing chocolate is that it changes that dynamic in our minds as to what it means to be healthy and to indulge ourselves. I found that they could be joyous and really enjoy their healthy diet. It was so freeing for them.
DEBRA: It is because good health actually should be a pleasure. It shouldn’t be deprivation. It should be a pleasure.
And in nature, nature makes all these wonderful fruits and flowers and all these things that are just a pleasure to use. And it makes things that are bad for us. It tastes bad.
Our industrial culture has changed that because now, we have this idea that industrially-processed food tastes good instead of the food that actually tastes good.
It’s like our signals are crossed.
But your products really bring that back. And that it has all these good things in it, and it tastes good. And it’s a pleasure to do something that help support a—so we’ve only got a few minutes left, so I want to make sure that you mention your trail mix. Tell us about the trail mix.
VANESSA BARG: Our love our trail mixes. They are so unique. There’s nothing like them on the market. They’re the only trail mixes that contain raw chocolate. I mean, […], chocolate is always the best part.
So we’ve got Superfoods. We’ve got Power Choc Trail Mix which contains really unpasteurized almonds. It has hempseeds in there. We have goji berries, which are a complete protein. So that really is focused around protein-rich foods.
The Power Choc is one of my favorites. We have Fleur De Sel salt in it, in the chocolate. So it’s this beautiful balance on your tongue between savory and sweet. So that’s our Fleur De Sel bar that is in the Power Choc Trail Mix […] protein.
And then we have our Immunity Trail Mix which is quite unique in that it has persimmons, pecans, black currants, pumpkin seeds, and our Simplicity chocolate, which is just our pure 70% chocolate. That one is very high in vitamins A and C, and has lots of zinc in it. That’s why it’s called our Immunity Trail Mix.
I love them both. It’s just so great to be able to put something in my bag and have my chocolate breaks at the same time. It’s really nourishing myself with the nuts and the seeds and the fruits. I love our trail mixes. It’s so great […]
DEBRA: Tell us about your chocolate bars.
VANESSA BARG: So the chocolate bars are definitely our bestsellers, and they are found in about 300 stores around the world. 12 are available in stores, but on our website, we have over 20 different flavors available.
I’ll just talk about my personal favorite. Don’t tell the other ones I said that though. It’s the SuperChoc bar. The SuperChoc has goji berries, raspberries, a base of 70% dark chocolate, and medicinal herbs that are called adaptogens.
Adaptogenic herbs are incredible. You should definitely look them up and try to include as many adaptogens in your diet as you can. Things like maca root and goji berries are adaptogens. And it has Reishi mushrooms, and all of these amazing herbs to help balance your hormonal system and just be maximum vibrant, and help in vitality.
So the SuperChoc is definitely our number one bestseller, my personal favorite.
The whole line of chocolate bars, some of them have medicinal herbs and superfoods. Some of them don’t. We have just the cool mint flavor. We have hazelnuts. We’ve got a deeply dark 90%. And we just go all over the math.
And I think that most people find something that is reminiscent of the chocolates that they used to it that had all the toxins and unhealthy ingredients in it. But this one just springs a whole other level to their love for chocolate.
I’m more than excited to offer all of your listeners a little coupon code. It’s TOXICFREE10, with no spaces. It can be lower case or capital,
TOXICFREE10. That will take 10% off of your entire order as long as you’re ordering $30 or more.
That coupon code will be available, I think, Debra, you said you’d post it on your site.
DEBRA: Yes. So how long…?
VANESSA BARG: I can keep extending it for you. I’m more than happy to do it.
DEBRA: That’s great.
VANESSA BARG: I really love what you’re doing. I’m so, so honored to be on your show. Thank you so very, very much.
DEBRA: Thank you. I know that people will be listening to this show off into the future. And they will appreciate still having this available.
Well, we’ve only got 30 seconds, 25 seconds left, So I’m just going to not ask you another question and just say thank you so much for being here.
Thank you so much for everything that you’re making and the viewpoint that you have. It’s a pleasure. It’s a pleasure.
VANESSA BARG: It’s an honor. Thank you so much for empowering people with this information. Thank you.
DEBRA: You’re welcome. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. Be well.
