Good Food, Good Health, Good Friends was published in 1955, so it can be classified as a postwar cookbook. The years immediately after the end of the Second World War in 1945 were characterized by change and adjustment within Canadian families. After years of conflict and economic and personal sacrifice, both overseas and at home in Canada, citizens longed for the security and comfort of ‘normal’ pre-war life. Women who had joined the workforce during Second World War were urged to return to the home and once again take up their roles of mothers and housewives. Resultingly, there was a significant increase in the birth rate, better known as the Baby Boom. Family ideals are reflected within the cookbook where nearly all the recipes are meant to serve six or more people. In addition, community cookbooks from this time were primarily written by and for women, to encourage home cooking and the return to traditional gender roles following the war.

While many of the recipes in this cookbook and other cookbooks at the time were  traditional ones utilizing commonplace ingredients, we also see the introduction of trendy and modern processed foods. This fact is a reflection of the pressures placed on women at the time to provide familiar and hearty meals to their families while also keeping up with culinary trends. Canned soups, meats, vegetables, and fruits were household staples in the 1950s, and were useful in reducing the time required to cook so women's efforts could be delegated to other household tasks. The use of canned ingredients can be found in nearly every dinner recipe in Good Food, Good Health, Good Friends, as well as in many of the dessert recipes where fresh fruit is replaced with canned alternatives. Similarly, during this time across North America, women were focused on incorporating new and exotic ingredients and recipes into their repertoires. Interestingly, this cookbook does not include any such ingredients, with most foodstuffs being ones that would be available locally. Presumably, the introduction of processed foods, but neglect of exotic ingredients and recipes, is a representation of the position of the women in this community who may have wanted to be modern and include those quicker, easier ingredients, but were not prepared to fully deviate away from tradition. 

An interesting element of this cookbook is the attention paid to healthy eating and weight loss. During the Second World War, Canadians were asked to ration certain foodstuffs in order to accumulate as much surplus food as possible to send overseas to soldiers serving on the front lines. This meant less consumption of wheat, sugar, and meat, as well as finding alternatives to use in everyday cooking and baking. After the war ended, rationing was no longer required, and developments in processed food production, variety, and advertising led to increased consumption of food and an overall increase in obesity rates and overeating. We can see hints of this within Good Food, Good Health, Good Friends where it is clear that women were quite comfortable using plenty of sugar, flour, and butter in their recipes after wartime alternatives and rationing were no longer required. Though Canadians were eager to go back to their normal eating habits, discussions about health in the 1950s began to include concern about body weight. In 1959, dietary advice and guidelines were spreading messages such as “Do not get fat; if you are fat, reduce.” This sort of advice was common across North America at the time, resulting in healthy eating and dieting being associated with an overall better quality of life. One of the most common ways to manage weight in the 1950s was caloric intake. This is consistent with the idea of ‘health’ we see in Good Food, Good Health, Good Friends. At the back of the book there are four pages dedicated to calorie counting and how to go about losing weight by cutting calories.