Jason Wyrick Lost 100 Pounds, Reversed Diabetes and Launched a Vegan Food Business

The Vegan Taste makes and delivers about 1,500 meals a week from the Phoenix area, where Wyrick relaunched his career as a vegan chef in 2004.

Jason Wyrick ’96 launched The Vegan Taste, which may be the United States’ first and longest-running vegan meal delivery service, in Phoenix in 2005. But he once led a very different lifestyle.

In his late 20s, Wyrick was overweight and diabetic. He changed his diet and lost over 100 pounds in less than two years, with most of his Type 2 diabetes symptoms going away within three months. The experience inspired him to become a vegan chef to help other people eat more healthfully.

A plant-based diet can provide many benefits, including lower body weight, reduced inflammation, a stronger immune system and reduced risk for diabetes, heart disease, stroke and other conditions.

“Without good food choices in front of people, people won’t change,” said Wyrick, who is dedicated to proving a plant-based diet can be delicious. For The Vegan Taste, he’s created dishes like biscuits and gravy, a Reuben melt and Thai red curry. The business makes and delivers about 1,500 meals every week.

THE FIRST STEP

Wyrick, a Texas native who grew up in Phoenix, was a lean basketball player in high school who could eat anything. But when he attended TCU and stopped playing sports, he gained weight.

Soon after graduating with a bachelor’s degree in philosophy, he became a vegetarian for ethical reasons. “I would do something stupid,” said Wyrick, who remained in Fort Worth for several years, “like open up a cream of mushroom soup, cook ravioli and douse it in the soup.”

By age 27, the 6-foot-3-inch Wyrick had reached 328 pounds and was diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes. “My diabetes was really out of control,” he said. “My eyesight was failing. I was sleeping 10 to 12 hours a day.”

Diabetes is a common condition. More than 40 million Americans — about 12 percent of the population — have diabetes, per the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. More than 88 percent of Type 2 diabetes cases involve patients who were overweight or obese at diagnosis.

Wyrick realized he needed to make drastic changes to his lifestyle. He copied a friend’s recipe for success: By following a vegan diet, she had lost weight and reversed her diabetes. He began avoiding all animal foods, including meat, seafood, dairy, eggs and butter — except for Wednesday nights, when he would go to his favorite Mexican restaurant for all-you-can-eat enchiladas.

“I was still able to lose a bunch of weight, get rid of the diabetes in a few months, and as I felt better, I found that I was only going to eat those enchiladas out of habit, not because they tasted good,” Wyrick said. “It totally changed my life.”

The transformation coincided with Wyrick’s search for a more meaningful career. He gave up his marketing job at a tech company to enter the food profession, moving back to Phoenix in 2004.

The largely self-taught chef saw a need for vegan options in Phoenix and experimented with a variety of ideas, including catering, teaching cooking classes and starting a salsa company. Some ventures were successful, some not.

“I still remember the first big catering event [in Phoenix] I did,” Wyrick said. “It was a fundraiser for a friend. After the dinner, my friend brought me out of the kitchen and everyone gave me a standing ovation. I was blown away.”

That’s when he realized he could pursue a vegan food career and help people eat healthier.

“Knowing that I could make a big impact in their lives, save a bunch of animals and help the environment … it was all wrapped up in that very small moment,” Wyrick said.

Soon after, he began writing and publishing recipes, which became an online magazine, The Vegan Culinary Experience. When a friend asked Wyrick to help change his lifestyle after being diagnosed with prostate cancer, Wyrick launched the meal delivery service that would become The Vegan Taste.

The online magazine grew to 40,000 subscribers, but with a baby on the way, he decided to focus on the revenue-generating meal delivery service.

All the experience and exposure brought more opportunity: Wyrick co-wrote The New York Times bestselling book 21-Day Weight Loss Kickstart: Boost Metabolism, Lower Cholesterol and Dramatically Improve Your Health with Dr. Neal Barnard.

Type 2 diabetes starts as fat builds up in muscles, liver cells and elsewhere in the body, stopping insulin from working, said Barnard, president of the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit organization that advocates for preventive medicine. Studies Barnard conducted with Yale University on the book’s diet found that people could reduce their liver fat by about one-third within 16 weeks.

Wyrick, now 52 and about 240 pounds, wrote about his personal health journey in the introduction to the book’s recipes. Among more than 60 recipes he created for the book, two of his favorites are Costa Rican rice and beans and curried tomato lentil soup. Wyrick later teamed up with Barnard on Power Foods for the Brain: An Effective 3-Step Plan to Protect Your Mind and Strengthen Your Memory.

“Jason understands the health and nutrition issues from both sides — one who worked to conquer his health issues and one who can guide others to do the same,” said Barnard, who teaches at George Washington University School of Medicine in Washington, D.C. “Jason also has a tremendous sensibility in the kitchen. He’ll make a fettuccine that will knock your socks off.”

CREATING RECIPES, COOKING MEALS

Wyrick has since written two of his own cookbooks, Vegan Tacos: Authentic & Inspired Recipes for Mexico’s Favorite Street Food and Vegan Mexico: Soul-Satisfying Regional Recipes From Tamales to Tostadas. Among the recipes is enchiladas mineras (miner’s enchiladas), a vegan version of red enchiladas loaded with vegetables and a little plant-based cheese.

He was the first vegan chef to teach in the Le Cordon Bleu program at the Scottsdale Culinary Institute in Arizona and has led vegan food tours in countries including Mexico and Italy. Wyrick opened Casa Terra, a vegan restaurant in Phoenix, in 2019, but it closed the next year after the city shuttered restaurants during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Running the restaurant was so stressful that Wyrick gained weight, triggering a return of diabetes. Through diet and exercise — he likes to lift weights and hike at Camelback and North mountains in the Phoenix area — Wyrick once again reversed his diabetes.

Despite those trying times, Wyrick and his wife, Madelyn Pryor, co-owner of The Vegan Taste, refocused on the meal delivery service, which really took off during the pandemic, he said. Pryor helps cook, puts finishing touches on meals and handles customer service.

Wyrick chops vegetables at a prep table in the kitchen of The Vegan Taste in Glendale, Arizona.

Wyrick created red curry lentils for The Vegan Taste.

An employee slices vegan lasagna at The Vegan Taste.

Pickled onions sit on a prep table in the kitchen at The Vegan Taste.

Wyrick assembles trays of tofu scramble chilaquiles for The Vegan Taste.

The Vegan Taste, which Wyrick said has become a multimillion-dollar business, has attracted customers like retiree Linda Nowacek of Scottsdale, Arizona, who found the meal service about five years ago.

“I have disabled hands and can’t cook anymore,” she said. “What’s really unique about Jason’s food preparation is that in addition to being vegan, he does organic as much as possible, and it’s oil-free, sugar-free, dairy-free and, for those who need it, gluten-free. Those are very hard constraints to work with when you’re trying to cook and not have it taste like cardboard. He does a great job. I’m definitely eating healthier.”

In addition to helping people through his meal prep business, Wyrick has informally coached others to lose weight through diet and reverse their diabetes diagnoses. Some of those people, he said, cut their A1C, a measurement of blood sugar levels, in half within about six months.

The Vegan Taste also donates food — about 15,000 meals a year — to families in need through local shelters, Wyrick said. Now his goal is to ramp up the charitable part of his business, perhaps reshaping it into a national nonprofit organization.

“I always got into this to help people, so it feels like a natural evolution,” he said. “It is a way to make the world better.”