eli5 How are different types of milk made? Does a cow produce heavy whipping cream that just gets diluted down to skim milk?
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Raw milk has a percentage of high fat buttermilk and cream in it.
Whole milk (or homo milk depending where you are from) is milk with the natural fat content.
A milk separator is basically a centrifuge the spins around and separates the milk into products with different fat levels.
Butter milk, cream, 2%, 1%, and skim milk are all made using this process.
Those products are then processed to make everything from butter, Ice Cream, cheese, yogurt, etc
A cow produces whole milk which is milk with fats mixed in. These fats can be isolated and skimmed off to be used as things like butter and cream. The different kinds of milk like 2%, 1%, and skim have to do with how much fat is removed from the milk before it is sold.
A cow produces milk with, on average, 3% to 4% fat content; it varies by the type of cow, the time of year, the diet of the cow, and overall condition. In large-scale industrial dairies, the fat content is removed to make skim milk, then precise amounts are added back in to make a consistent final product. In the US whole milk has 3.25% fat, and other common options are 2% and skim. In Europe whole milk is 3.5% fat, and we tend to have richer cream as well.
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