The early 1900s was the start of a deeper understanding about food safety. The Robin Hood Cook Book was published and became available during this very important time in the food/health industry’s development. Industrialisation changed the way food was produced, bringing with it positives and negatives. The negatives of industrialisation put many people in danger and created a need for reforms. Sinclair wrote The Jungle to broadcast the horrible working conditions and unsanitary practices of factories in the meat industry of Chicago. This book and other efforts by journalists fostered the creation of a new act, The Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906. The public lost trust in food companies. The large manufacturing food companies needed to find a way to regain the trust of the public. The Robin Hood Cook Book attempted to regain the trust of the public by spending a lot of money on the creation of a unique marketing cookbook which also depicted sanitary and clean factories.

The Jungle is a novel which follows the story of a fictional character by the name of Jurgis Rudkis--a man who had recently emigrated to Chicago. Rudkis soon became a victim of many injustices that were normal for an immigrant at that time. He discovered that the company he worked for cheated workers out of pay and used the assembly line to force all men to work for the same pay irrespective of the job. These injustices were nothing compared to the unsanitary and horrible working conditions inside the factories: men with skin diseases in the pickling rooms, men frequently losing fingers on the assembly line, men breaking their backs by carrying meat over their shoulders, and others. The companies created deplorable working conditions and created products that were infected with disease. The disease-ridden products were treated with chemicals and still being sold to the public. The atrocities that are described in Sinclair’s book seemed to never end. He explains what was normal procedure when someone fell into steaming lard vats in this quote: “when they were fished out, there was never enough of them left to be worth exhibiting,--sometimes they would be overlooked for days, till all but the bones of them had gone out to the world as Durham's Pure Leaf Lard.” To set Robin Hood Flour apart from the other factory running food companies, they created a cookbook.

The Robin Hood Cook Book is a marketing cookbook for flour, but it was primarily made to market and promote Robin Hood factories that were clean and had working conditions that were admirable. The Robin Hood Cook Book features drawings of Robin Hood Flour factories and mills three times in the cookbook. Two pages in the centre display two large images of Robin Hood factories. The factories are large white buildings with brown roofs. The colour white may have been used in the drawings of the factory to create a sense or idea of cleanliness. “ROBIN HOOD FLOUR” is written multiple times on the factory walls. Having “ROBIN HOOD FLOUR” written this many times can be seen as a way of showing that the company is proud of their factories and that the company has nothing to hide. The writing on a factory in one of the images reads: “ROBIN HOOD FLOUR IS DIFFERENT.” This may just be referencing the product itself, but it could also be the company saying to its customers that it is not like the other factories. It is a company that has factories that are sanitary and clean, unlike other company’s factories. Because of the release of The Jungle and the creation of the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906, it is fair to assume that the saying “ROBIN HOOD FLOUR IS DIFFERENT” may be referencing the factories and not the product.

The Robin Hood Cook Book was a colourful and unique effort to positively affect the company’s image in a time of bad press for many companies. It displays clean and well functioning factories with a slogan which separates itself from the other unsanitary companies. The need for this marketing campaign was caused by the efforts of Upton Sinclair to accelerate the passing of the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906. The act was passed to stop the inhumane way companies used their workers and to ensure that the factories were sanitary. The creation of the act marks a new age in food safety.