That looks like you've read posts of mine lol.
There is a thread on the blog where we discussed different parenting manuals from the past and the guidelines.
In the 1700's people breastfed exclusively until a year.
In the 1920's it was 9 months.
Dr Spock brought it to 4 months.
When formula was commercialised (there are recipes on the blog if you want to make your own) in the 50s the companies needed to get custom as no one was using formula before then, they didn't need to, they had breasts if this was today formula would have a problem getting started! The way they got custom was to bring out scientists to say that breastfeeding was bad for you and the baby and formula was far superior.
The problem with formula though was that it couldn't sustain a baby for any length of time so they had to start weaning sooner, this meant that they couldn't allow a baby to self feed anymore and they had to puree food to make a baby take it earlier than they should have.
New gap opens in the market and purees become commercialised.
Since then we have been recovering from that and science has been doing it's best to get things how they should be.
No harm done? I don't know about that. Look around at the state of the world. No one knows their limits with food, we have more obesity than ever, more allergies, asthma, exzema, more people dying from heart attacks, more bowel conditions...
I wonder how many of us or our parents had lead paint on our cots and toys, we may be ok, but there was a reason it stopped being used! If you had it and are ok, you're lucky.