What Jelly Roll Actually Eats

Jelly Roll — also known as Jason DeFord — is probably one of the biggest music stars ever named after a dessert. So, what does one of the premier food-based celebrities eat? The answer actually isn't straightforward, because Jelly Roll's relationship with food has changed since he first broke out into the mainstream.

In recent years, Jelly Roll has become vocal about his desire to lose weight. In November of 2024, for example, he told People that he had lost 110 pounds that year alone. While he started exercising regularly, maybe even more significant to his transformation was facing what he described as a food addiction. Naturally, then, he's typically pretty deliberate about what he eats. During his weight loss journey he appeared in a March 2025 Zevia soda commercial, posting the video to his Instagram page with the caption: "Some things in life don't need sugar-coating. I'm one of 'em."

Of course, living the lifestyle of a touring stadium act means that his approach to diet is at least a little unconventional. From literal jelly rolls to bespoke recipes crafted by his private chef, the following are some of the foods that Jelly Roll eats in his day-to-day life.

To answer the most obvious question first, Jelly Roll does indeed like to eat jelly rolls. But he wasn't named after a proper jelly roll (which is a sort of spiral sponge cake with a jelly filling). Rather, his mother gave him the nickname thinking that it was another word for a jelly donut. The inspiration behind the nickname, he told People, was his size, and it's something peers have been calling him since high school.

Of course, once he became a public figure, actual jelly rolls became a fixture of his life. He told People that he receives them as gifts and in catering at concert venues. His favorite flavors, he went on to reveal, are strawberry and grape. Jelly Roll even owns a bar, music venue, and restaurant in Tennessee's capital called Goodnight Nashville, and on the menu is a classic jelly roll. The recipe at Jelly Roll's restaurant pairs a lemon sponge cake base with a filling made from mascarpone whip, toasted almonds, and — what else but one of Jelly Roll's favorites — strawberry jam.

Jelly Roll was once a fast food connoisseur. More than any other restaurant, he has a particular affinity for Waffle House. Even after the restaurant chain sued over his use of its name and logo for a mixtape, Jelly Roll shared in a 2021 Instagram post that he chose not to hold a grudge.

Meanwhile, he told Gawker back in 2013 that his go-to order at the time was a modified All-Star Breakfast, consisting of scrambled eggs with cheese, wheat toast, sausage, and a chocolate-chip waffle, alongside double-splattered, scattered, smothered, covered, and chunked hash browns. There's a lot to know before ordering hash browns at Waffle House, and those are all proprietary terms that basically just mean the hash browns are extra crispy and made with ample servings of cheese, ham, and onions.

Some of the most detailed insights into Jelly Roll's everyday diet come courtesy of videos on social media featuring his chef and nutritionist, Ian Larios. When he's not cooking for Jelly Roll on tour, Larios is known for working on food and nutrition for mixed martial artists. He's so acclaimed in that world, in fact, that he won the award for trainer of the year at the 2024 World MMA Awards.

In one particular video Jelly Roll shared to his personal Instagram account in October of 2024 — filmed about halfway through a full U.S. tour — Larios starts by praising Jelly Roll's work ethic, highlighting some of the singer's show-day fitness regimen. Then, Larios walks viewers through the preparation of a couple healthy dishes. As it turns out, one of Jelly Roll's favorite things to eat before getting on stage is a banana. While Jelly Roll presumably enjoys his bananas plain from time to time, Larios prepares something "a little bit fancier" — a bowl of chopped up banana pieces topped with Manuka honey and grated, stevia-sweetened dark chocolate.

Jelly Roll grew up in a Nashville, Tennessee neighborhood called Antioch. One of the foods most publicly linked to the city of Nashville is, of course, Nashville hot chicken. While the city's specialty is something that Jelly Roll clearly eats and most likely enjoys, he's also critical of the defining dish of his hometown.

First of all, in the same Instagram video as the banana bowl, Ian Larios cooks what he describes as a Nashville-style hot chicken, prepared without oil or batter. Instead, he coats the chicken in a mix of potato flour and rice flour before crisping it up in an air fryer. Then it's spiced. While this suggests that the flavor profile of Nashville hot chicken is something Jelly Roll enjoys on tour, he's a bit more negative about the dish in a video his wife, Bunnie XO, posted on YouTube.

Before eating increasingly spicy tenders from Nashville staple Hattie B's, Jelly Roll describes hot chicken spots as the "tourist trap[s] of Nashville." Then he drops the fact that neither he nor Bunny XO enjoy spicy food. From the sound of it, then, he's not a Nashville hot chicken cheerleader but seems to still eat a version of it that's tailor-made to his preferences, perhaps out of allegiance to his hometown. For what it's worth, his restaurant Goodnight Nashville has both a hot chicken mac and cheese and a hot chicken sandwich on its menu.

Another key detail nutritionist Ian Larios reveals about Jelly Roll's diet, while discussing his Nashville hot chicken recipe on Instagram, is that he's helping the musician maintain a high-protein diet. People's love of protein-packed everything has become something of a trend on TikTok, even if the amounts of protein recommended in those viral videos aren't always appropriate for everyone watching. That said, Larios explains in an Instagram video that the intent behind this aspect of Jelly Roll's diet is to maximize the extent to which the food Jelly Roll eats keeps him satiated.

This high-protein diet is also the inspiration behind a side of french fries meant to accompany the Nashville chicken that Jelly Roll's chef boils in bone broth — the bone broth ups the protein content of the fries, while also, as Larios explains, ensuring that the fries crisp up in the air fryer after they're removed from the liquid. "It's healthy, it's air fried, it's full of protein," Larios says at the video's conclusion. "It helps him stay on track."

In Jelly Roll's follow-up Instagram video about his diet, Ian Larios prepares what he describes as a Japanese-style potato pancake stuffed with popcorn chicken. Just like his Nashville-style hot chicken and the bone broth-boiled fries, Larios makes use of an air frier to crisp up the popcorn chicken in this recipe. An air fryer, he explains in the prior video, can help trick the brain into thinking it's enjoying something greasier and more indulgent than it is in reality.

Precisely what he places in the air fryer for his Japanese-style potato pancake are cut-up pieces of chicken breast marinated in pineapple juice, vinegar, and cayenne pepper, coated in a combination of rice flour and potato flour. Those are incorporated into a quasi-pancake batter comprised of white potato shreds boiled in bone broth. After they're cooked on a stove, these chicken-stuffed pancakes are topped with a homemade Japanese barbecue sauce made with pineapple juice, ginger, garlic, and a gluten-free soy sauce. "Meals like this are helping him stay on track," Larios says. "He's been eating consistent throughout tour, eating good, whole foods. Consistency is everything and that's exactly what Jelly has done every single day this tour."

As a Southern man, it's hardly surprising that Jelly Roll enjoys good old fashion barbecue. His love for one of America's signature cuisines isn't just a byproduct of his birthplace, however, but interlinked with his family's work in the meat business. Jelly Roll explains in a TikTok video that both his father and grandfather owned meat companies, and his brother still works in the meat industry today.

In that same video, he and his brother visit a barbecue spot called Shaffer's Farm in Summertown, Tennessee. The restaurant's namesake, it turns out, is a patron of the DeFord family — Jelly Roll's family name — who bought from his father and now buys from his brother. While personal bias may play a factor, Jelly Roll describes Shaffer's Farm as a longtime favorite. He orders a plate of brisket, sausage, and so-called swamp cornbread. Attached is a meat market, and Jelly Roll purchases plenty of meats as well as the restaurant's white sauce, which is a unique barbecue sauce style from Alabama.

Jelly Roll's affinity for barbecue has even earned him some unique opportunities at the annual Stagecoach country music festival. At Stagecoach, Guy Fieri prepares barbecue alongside celebrity guests. While he performed in 2024 and is headlining in 2025, Jelly Roll also scheduled some time alongside iconic Food Network superstar, Fieri. And for the 2025 festival, Jelly Roll claims in an Instagram video with Fieri that he practiced barbecuing at home all year in preparation for the April event.

Everyone has a dish or two that Thanksgiving simply isn't complete without. For Jelly Roll, that dish is clearly the Thanksgiving dressing from a restaurant called Barr's Music City Soul Food in his hometown of Nashville, Tennessee. For those unaware, the difference between dressing and stuffing really just comes down to geographical lingo. In a TikTok video he posted on November 22, 2023, Jelly Roll explains that he promised his wife he would pick up dressing for that year's Thanksgiving, but forgot to place his order with Barr's Music City Soul Food until the day before. Apparently the restaurant was so busy, it wasn't answering its phone whatsoever. To ensure he can deliver on his promise, Jelly Roll offers a whopping $1,000 for two pans of the dressing.

Fortunately for Jelly Roll's Thanksgiving 2023 dinner attendees, that video got the Barr family's attention, and Jelly Roll did indeed pay his promised sum for his two pans. For what it's worth, Jelly Roll has a regular, non-holiday order at Barr's. During a visit with John Cena for the wrestling superstar's Roku TV show "What Drives You?," Jelly Roll orders a plate of bone-out baked chicken with yams and mac and cheese. Their server — restaurant owner Frederick Barr — then offers Cena some of Jelly Roll's favorite Thanksgiving side, which he even calls the "Jelly Roll dressing."

In 2024, Jelly Roll was pretty public about the fact he lost more than 100 pounds. While that year marked his most dramatic weight loss, he began sharing some insight into his weight-loss journey in the years prior.

On January 3, 2022, for instance, he posted a video on his Facebook account walking viewers through a chicken recipe he prepared at home. At the video's start, he reveals that he lacks some basic kitchen skills because he had only just started cooking at the time of the video's filming. The video's caption clarifies that cooking was a skill he wanted to add to his repertoire as part of his "health journey." He goes on to prepare a dish he describes as lemon pepper basil chicken. In essence, he simmers cherry tomatoes, shredded carrots, and chopped bell peppers in a mix of jarred garlic, Dash seasoning, lemon juice, basil pesto, and chicken broth. Then he adds hot sauce, rice, water, and ground chicken with egg whites before removing his pot from the stove and letting his family and friends taste the finished product.

Jelly Roll may have largely given up indulgences once he started altering his diet, but on special occasions, at least, he still seems to enjoy Texas burger chain Whataburger. Famously, Jelly Roll patronized a Whataburger in May of 2023 after he performed at that year's Academy of Country Music Awards ceremony. In the Whataburger drive-thru that night, he offered a $1,000 tip to be split among the restaurant's active employees, such that each of them received $200. A video of Jelly Roll's generous offer then circulated on social media.

The fact that this Whataburger meal was in celebration of his Country Music Awards performance was something Jelly Roll revealed during an appearance on "The Bobby Bones Show" later that year, available on YouTube. As it turns out, Jelly Roll said he does not remember the viral moment, but he did confirm that he leaves large tips with some regularity. His Whataburger trip just happened to be the one time his generous tipping habit was caught on camera.