There's a lot of talk about juicing, cleansing, and healthy eating these days. Some of that is because it's January, a month when many people resolve to eat better and/or quit drinking for a month, but I also think that increasingly people understand that the food we eat each day is a crucial component of our overall health.

Last week, Wassef and Racha Haroun, owners of Capitol Hill's excellent Mamnoon, opened Anar, a "modern union of food, juice, and life," in Amazon.com's Doppler building downtown. Like Mamnoon, Anar is steeped in Middle Eastern flavors and traditions, but with a decidedly healthy focus: house-made fruit-and-vegetable juices, sweet and savory yogurt drinks made with ingredients such as rosewater, orange blossom, and pomegranate. There's also a menu of small and large plates—all of it vegetarian, gluten-free, and without any processed sugars.

Just yesterday, local business owners Autumn Martin, of the all-organic dessert shops Hot Cakes Molten Chocolate Cakery, and Kari Brunson, who owns the organic cold-pressed juicery and cafe Juicebox, announced plans to open Frankie & Jo's, a plant-based ice cream shop that will use nut milks, coconut cream, organic fruits, and organic sugars from dates and maple. (They even plan to make waffle cones from a flour made of the dried, ground leftover meal of the nut-milk process.)

Around town, fresh-pressed juices and elixirs are becoming the norm at new restaurants and coffee shops like Ericka Burke's Chop Shop, which features twelve different fresh-pressed juices such as an "alkalizing lemonade" and "chia fresca" (made with housemade kombucha), and Tom Douglas's Assembly Hall Juice and Coffee, which features wheatgrass shots and a "rabbit food" juice alongside less virtuous items like pretzel bagels smeared with Nutella cream cheese.

It's easy enough to go to a juice bar or cafe and buy healthy food, but it's another thing entirely to shift the way you approach and eat food everyday, all year long.

This is something local food writer Sara Dickerman understands—and, thankfully, something she addresses head-on in her new book Bon Appétit: The Food Lovers Cleanse, which grew out of the popular cleanse she has been developing for the food magazine Bon Appétit for the last six years.

"I have misgivings about the word cleanse," Dickerman writes. "It's more appealing, I suppose, than diet or regimen, but using it is hard for me because it suggests that the opposite of cleansing is getting dirty. And I'm pro-food. I don't think eating, no matter how indulgent, is a sullying experience." Amen.

Dickerman doesn't see her book as a cure-all or an easy solution, but as a a way of directing "the trajectory of your eating in a healthier direction." There's an emphasis on good technique as a means of bringing out flavor. (Also emphasized: condiments, including a recipe for a walnut-parsley pesto made with anchovies, sherry vinegar, and smoked paprika, which I'm currently obsessed with.)

The book is filled with recipes that, while healthful, are more memorable for their depth of flavor and mix of textures that make eating the food a real pleasure—dishes like spicy smoked chickpeas, miso flank steak, and coconut oatmeal with cacao nibs and dates. (If you want to experience some of the dishes yourself, Capitol Hill restaurant Tallulah's is featuring some of Dickerman's recipes as twice-weekly specials now through February 15.)

As great as Dickerman's book is, there's something about the premise of it that doesn't quite sit well with me: that being a "food lover" requires shopping at farmers' markets and knowing what radicchio, za'atar, and farrotto are. While she acknowledges that different people have different preferences, "budgets, and shopping scenarios," the book certainly speaks more to Bon Appétit readers with more money to spend on ingredients than most people I know.

For the last few weeks, I've been drawing just as much, if not more, inspiration to cook and eat well from a local Facebook group called Healthy & Wealthy, which was started by Andrew Matson (a friend of mine) and Kellen Herndon. People are encouraged to post pictures and recipes, as well as the estimated cost, of healthy food they make, whether it's baked yams, spiced lamb chops, whole grain spaghetti with turkey meatballs (cooked in bulk to make lunches for a week), or a pre-packaged kale salad topped with a chicken breast cooked on a George Foreman grill.

"Healthy & Wealthy is about cooking healthy at home and trying to be thrifty about it," Matson told me. "It's about sharing how we finesse ingredients from Grocery Outlet."

So far the group has over 900 members, with new posts going up each day.