In his "Memorial on the Nutrition of Infants" Henri Nestlé wrote, "During the first months, the mother's milk will always be the most natural nutriment, and every mother, able to do so, should herself suckle her children”.

The availability of nutritious and life-sustaining infant formulas is relatively recent. Until the late 19th century, there was virtually no safe alternative to breastfeeding and few infants not breastfed by their mother or a wet nurse survived the first year. Appallingly, in London in the early 1800’s, only about 10 percent of non breastfed infants survived their first year of life. At the turn of the 19th century, not being breastfed meant almost certain death for infants.
In 1867, Henri Nestlé developed the first commercial infant food, which was made of dried cow’s milk, combined with cereals and sugar. This responded to the need for a safe substitute for breast milk when a baby could not be fed at the breast.
Yet Henri Nestlé never intended his invention to compete with breast-milk. In his "Memorial on the Nutrition of Infants" printed in 1869, Henri Nestlé wrote: "During the first months, the mother's milk will always be the most natural nutriment, and every mother, able to do so, should herself suckle her children." 
Today, infant formula is the only product recognised to be a suitable breast-milk substitute by the United Nations Codex Alimentarius Commission, the international food standard setting body.

Emergence of health concerns over the use of breast-milk substitutes in developing countries

In 1966, Dr. Derrick Jelliffe, Director of the Caribbean Food and Nutrition Institute, published a brochure called Child Nutrition in Developing Countries, where he warned of the danger of bottle feeding in “traditional and semi-sophisticated populations”. In 1969, he brought his concerns to a meeting of the United Nations Protein Advisory Group (PAG). Another group of health experts disagreed with his position, stressing that infant formula is a needed product and that infant morbidity has to be viewed as part of a larger set of problems.

In 1972, another PAG meeting addressed the marketing practices of infant formula manufacturers. In a statement, PAG outlined the responsibilities of governments, paediatricians and the infant formula industry. Manufacturers were asked to stress the importance of breastfeeding in their own employee training programmes, to avoid discouraging breastfeeding, to develop standard directions for the preparation of commercial formulas and to use product labels and literature as a means of encouraging better hygiene in infant food preparations.

Following the studies and reports from international organisations, Nestlé reviewed its marketing practices and instituted some changes in its promotional activities. By 1972, Nestlé had prohibited contact between its personnel and mothers in maternity wards of hospitals in most countries, it had prohibited direct sampling of infant formula to new mothers, and it had began systematically including a statement on the superiority of breastfeeding on all labels of infant formula products sold in developing countries.