Sharon Palmer

Published on August 26, 2015

Updated on October 13, 2020

I am so excited to have Kareem, the Managing Partner and Chief Operating Officer of Naturade, and John Lewis, the Bad Ass Vegan, on my blog today. I met these fabulous men at the Vegan Smart brunch in the Arts District of Downtown LA, and I couldn’t wait to have them on my blog. They are doing such amazing work in the plant-based community.

*Kareem Cook, Managing Partner and Chief Operating Officer of Naturade*

Kareem Cook is the Co-Founder and Managing Director at Towerview Capital Management (TCM), a private equity firm specializing in leveraged buyouts of middle-market companies focused on preventative medicine, healthier products and healthier lifestyles. Kareem’s childhood friend, Claude, is also the co-founder and business partner of TCM. Through TCM, Kareem acquired Naturade, a leading nutraceutical company which sells vitamins and supplements, and he has assumed the position of Chief Marketing Officer within the company. The company’s products include VeganSmart and Symbiotics. In addition to serving on the Fuqua Minority Alumni Board, he is also Chairman of the Duke Club in Los Angeles, serves on the board of The Executive Prep Academy of Finance in Inglewood and serves on the American Heart Association Health Equity Task Force.

John Lewis is a nationally certified fitness trainer. He has spent over 8 years in the health and fitness industry and played Division I College basketball. John is highly passionate about not only his own health and fitness, but that of others as well, and strives to educate his clients on living and maintaining a healthy lifestyle. John has appeared in multiple television shows, music videos, and fitness magazines such as Muscle & Fitness, Mens Fitness, Fitness Rx, Exercise for Men, and Planet Muscle, as well as Maxim and Sports Illustrated. John’s education in business coupled with his love for health and fitness gave him the ability to start his venture – Bad Ass Vegan – a health and nutrition company that strives to educate individuals on plant-based nutrition. John’s love for his community brought forth the brainchild for a foundation whose mission is to prevent obesity through education, physical activity and plant-based nutrition.

Tell us a little bit about your plant-based journey?

Kareem: We have a storied past with health and wellness. Prior to buying Naturade, we started a healthy vending company in LA. we were responsible for junk food being banned in LA schools, and leading the state of California to banning junk foods. We put the first healthy vending machine in LA and acquired the contract for all of public schools in LA. Our initial background was in health and wellness.

We are very passionate about how chronic disease has affected our community. We have high rates of hypertension and diabetes based on large part because of what we eat. These are preventable diseases that affect our African American community. When you look around you see childhood obesity is a problem. In 2002, we started a business plan: first it was working in high schools, and then from there we wanted to try to deal with preventing these types of disease from a business standpoint. We thought, why don’t we try do something on a larger scale? Take it as far as we can take it? Governor Huckabee and Bill Clinton asked us to talk in Arkansas for the Alliance for a Healthier Generation.

We raised money to address this phenomenon in our community; we bought a company with a plant-based way to do this. We wanted to seek out people of similar interest, which led us to John. He is a strong advocate for a plant-based diet, so we partnered with him. VeganSmart is pretty much the cleanest way you can go in terms of supplementation.

Hospitals are not filled with people on a plant-based diet. We want to change peoples’ eating habits. We want to tell them why eating a plant-based diet helps you to live longer. We want to speak to our community, which doesn’t get spoken to. We want to tell them about a healthy balance that allows people to avoid types of disease. Our whole thesis in buying this company is to have a Whole Foods quality product that sells to a Whole Foods customer, and bring it to all of the customers who need it. We realized that if we if we do it with celebrities we can make it cool to be healthy. Look at John; he embodies cool. People who represent companies who are healthy and fit—it makes it cool to want to be that person.

John: My story started on the health side of the veganism movement. I went vegetarian when I went from St. Louis, Missouri to Miami, Florida to go to graduate school. I couldn’t eat the food, there was so much ethnic food—Cuban, Haitian, Caribbean—and my stomach wasn’t going for that. I remember going to the school doctor and he asked me if I ate a lot of meat, and I said not at all. In reality I ate meat 8 times a day! I was a natural athlete! So, I literally tried not to eat meat for 3 days, I thought I was going to die! In 2004, a good friend of mine passed away from sickle cell anemia on Halloween day. I went into a phase that I wanted to make my life better, On November 1 I went vegetarian. The doctor said to try vegetarian for 30 days, but I felt like a million bucks in 15 days. A year and half later my mother was diagnosed with colon cancer. When that happened I did my own research, and found that too much animal protein could have been a cause. I’m a big believer in learning from my own mistakes, even bigger from other’s mistakes. That’s the path I took; from that point on I went into an all plant-based eating regimen. I like to stay away from the word “diet”—the key word is “die”. This is a way of life. If you really look at it, when you’re eating for life, it’s a way of living.

I started off with the P90X work out system. I was one of the faces of the P90X system in commercials and ads. It brought lots of awareness and people couldn’t believe I was vegan. When you go vegan, automatically everyone becomes a nutrition expert, wondering if you are going to be ok. I thought that there was a need that had to be filled, so I started a website and blog. The first name that came to my head was Bad Ass Vegan; I bought the website and incorporated it, and that’s really where it all came from. We want to make it cool. We’re not the pushy type either, we want people to look at how much fun we’re having over here. That’s part of this too. People are receptive to it.

How has your work made an impact in the African American community?

Kareem: For the first couple of years we didn’t put our face everywhere. We didn’t until Naturade had been around a long time. But we realized that we were selling ourselves in plain view! We were in Ebony in 2013 and going to the National Medical Association with African American doctors. John and I are members of one of the largest black fraternities, so went down to that conference. Being vegan—and African American—we wanted to reach out. There’s a lot to partake of here in LA; there’s a Whole Foods in Playa Vista, where a lot of affluent African Americans are living in LA—they’re out in full force there. We wanted to have a kind of presence; VeganSmart is doing things to big make a big noise, to show what it looks like to be healthy, that it’s cool, and talking to people about being an entrepreneur. Our biggest inspiration was Reginald Lewis, and we thought, why can’t this be us. We’re telling our story; it’s hard to be an entrepreneur, we slept on the couch on the office for the first year.

Our response has been tremendous, particularly when John and I have gone out to Whole Foods and talked to people. We make it exciting, and we sold out everything the first day. We think we have this figured out, we understand the message, and we speak the language. You can see the conversation going on. You can understand. People reach out to us, and we’re just starting.

John: We been having a huge impact through social media for one, we’re just out and about, even at the vegan brunches, and it’s not for nothing. The truth is, that if we were to throw a vegan brunch back in the past, you probably wouldn’t see that many individuals of different races in general that understand what the trends are, that some foods are definitely bad for the body and maybe there is something wrong so maybe I should see what’s going on. Before people didn’t want to know, now they are sincerely asking you. It’s a great feeling to see that these people are interested and want to know more. The things that seem normal are not always right, like going to McDonalds and getting cancer in your 40s. We are able to tell people to come down and see what we eat—it’s the number one starting block for everything else. I tell people that our bodies are like Ferraris; not enough rest, high stress levels, and eating the wrong things is like putting regular unleaded gas into the tank. It will work for a while to get from point A to B, but eventually the system breaks down. We are seeing a lot of people interested in prevention, including African Americans, the Latino community, and Samoan ethnicities. The way my people eat—I want to change it. I just had a friend and family member pass away.

How do you recommend using Vegan Smart?

Kareem: It is designed it to replace a meal. It is high in plant-based protein, has 22 vitamins and minerals, digestive enzymes, and prebiotics. People use it typically to lose weight. We have a VeganSmart challenge now, to replace one meal with it each day. People have been hitting us up that they’ve lost weight and feel so much better. Some people use it before and after a workout, too.

John: I drink it twice a day. I love it for breakfast. It’s convenient and I’m always on the go and up early. Sometimes with my traveling so much it’s convenient on the go with a single serve packet.

What are your best tips for people who want to eat a more plant-based diet?

John: For me what you have to do in order to be vegan is to mentally prepare yourself, not just for one aspect about how your body will feel, but for the fact that it’s going to be new. Prepare yourself for changes; mentally and socially. When you go vegan you are going to lose 5 friends, so get ready to transition. Don’t think I’m going to eat with my friends, I want to be a closet vegan and when they order steak I’ll get a salad. You’ve got to be ready for it. The other part is to have fun with it; we’re cool. It’s ok, you’re not going to miss anything.

Kareem: Be open-minded. I had a friend come over and he had a bunch of kale, and I asked him if he had ever had kale chips. So I said, let’s go and they were great! When I was a kid, the word Brussels sprouts and avocados scared me. You have to look at the inner child, being open to things that taste really good. There is so much out there you can eat.