Kamila McDonald is venturing into uncharted territory, but she is confident that the menu that she will offer clients at her plant-based restaurant, Kamila’s Kitchen, will be tasty and hip to have repeat customers for a viable business.

The former beauty pageant’s top-five finisher is promising nutritious delight to regular treats such as burgers, tacos, sushi, salads, wraps, smoothies and juices, but with guilt-free indulgence, that captivates the taste bud.

According to McDonald, the menu will be attractive and delicious for meat-eaters, who want to take a break for short periods, but still want scrumptious healthy plant-based meals.

“Food is really the foundation of life and the foods that we eat determine the type of life and quality that we live and so it’s very important for us to prioritise health and the meals that we are eating every day.

“As a health and fitness advocate over the last decade, I have always preached a healthy diet and now I feel excited and honoured to be able to offer that to people who find it difficult to prepare healthy meals at home,” McDonald said.

It was the plant-based road that her parents, Dr Kerida ‘Goldilocks’ McDonald and Errol ‘Chakula’ McDonald, took her on as a child, which inspired Kamila’s Kitchen which was also mainly financed by them. She noted that at the time, a plant-based diet wasn’t as popular as it is now, but they saw the importance of it.

She said, while in college, she stepped away from the lifestyle, but she has returned, she has seen a remarkable transformation in her life that includes losing 65 pounds, which she has kept off with the plant-based diet.

“Seeing the power of food and what it has done for me, the inspiration is to share that with, and empower others.  We have a philosophy of ‘farm to fork’ so we farm some of the foods, we gather foods from neighbouring farmers because that philosophy is a very important one, McDonald shared.

“We must eat what we grow and grow what we eat, and food must be the medicine and the medicine your food. What we don’t realise is the acidity of meat, so we as humans, our bodies thrive in an alkaline state.

“I know the Caribbean and Jamaica, it’s in our culture to eat a lot of meat and luckily I wasn’t exposed. I have never eaten pork, for example, I have never eaten beef, because that’s just how I was raised and I just find that I just have the most energy, my skin is most vibrant, I have the most focus. I am always in a good mood and I know this is because of the type of food that I eat,” McDonald added.

Kamila’s Kitchen only does deliveries currently but is expected to start having dine-in customers at Skyline Drive, St Andrew in May.