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Upton Sinclair, a famous muckraker of the early twentieth century, was most notable for his novel, The Jungle. In his descriptive exposé of the meat packing industry, Sinclair’s novel was able to catch the attention of the American public and the United States government, and promote legislation to set higher standards for inspection the food industry. By employing a series of rhetorical questions the legitimacy of the food products the family purchase is questioned. For example “How could they find out that their tea and coffee, their sugar and flour, had been doctored; that their canned peas had been coloured with copper salts, and their fruit jams with aniline dyes?”(84). Such questions as well as the addition of details such as “handfuls of the dried dug of rats” piled on top of meat ready to be shipped to consumers portrayed in the novel shocked the public and are key elements that pushed for Theodore Roosevelt to pass the Pure Food and Drug Act and the Meat Inspection Act in 1906 (151). Both acts significantly cleaned up the meat packing industry, by providing tests on all foods processed for human consumption. Historians agree that Upton Sinclair’s novel is responsible for the change in the way food is processed, as well as the rise health improvements of the Americans associated with the safer foods available for consumption.