I just feel like its weird how the percentage goes from 1-2% to whole.
Also, what do these percentages even mean? How can you turn milk into 1% or 2% milk?
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Whole milk is 4% fat. That’s the natural level of fat in milk before they remove some. So “100% milk” doesn’t exist – the milk they comes right out of the cow is completely milk – but it’s not 100% fat.
2%, 1%, and 0% (skim) milk have had the fat removed. The fat is then used to make products like half-and-half or cream.
Whole milk is about 4% milk fat. Above that and we don’t call it milk any more, but mostly cream.
* Half and half (roughly meaning half milk and half cream) is 10-18%.
* Light cream is 18-30%.
* Whipping cream is 30-36%.
* Heavy whipping cream 36-40%.
* Double cream is 48%.
Above that is basically butter (70%).
1% and 2% refers to the amount of whole milk fat in the mixture.
The fat will rise to the top of fresh milk and can be skimmed (skim milk) off for use in other products like butter or heavy cream.
You can then add back some whole milk to the skimmed milk
Whole milk is around 4%…..so really the only thing missing is 3% (and all the fractions). Like anything else there isn’t a good cost effective reason to produce every possible different blend
Which kinds of milk are available depends on the dairy and the culture.
In Denmark, you can have:
* “Sweet milk” or whole milk at 3.5 %
* “Light milk” or sem-skimmed at 1.5 %
* “Mini milk” at 0.5 %
* Skimmed milk at 0.1 %
From nature, you get full milk (which depending on the cow and what she’s been eating) is probably around 3.5-4 % fat. The dairy can then remove the cream, making skim milk, By adding amounts of fat back into the milk they can then make milks of different percentages. I do believe that semi-skimmed used to be made by combining whole and skimmed milk, and they might still do it that way.
As far as I know, different kinds of cream are made in a similar way: mixing the cream with milk in different proportions.
There’s a farm near me that sells whole milk. Instead of advertising it as Whole, or 3% milk… They call it “97% Fat Free milk”.
Makes it sound healthier I guess.
In Canada, we have 3.25% milk fat. It comes in the red bag and we call it “homo milk”.
[Proof](https://www.a2milk.ca/products/3-25-homogenized-milk) [Proof2](https://www.walmart.ca/en/ip/Sealtest-Homogenized-3-25-Milk/6000199047982)
The % refers to the amount of fat in the milk. Whole milk is around 4%. We then remove some of the fat from the milk to make different skim milk, 2% has half its fat removed, 1% is 75% removed, and use the fat to make other products.
Probably depends on where you live. Where I live, we have 0.5%, 0.7%, 0.9%, 1.8% and many more.
milk fat varies between cows and farms. Some cows have over 4%. So during the processing they separate all the fat and then put back the proper amount to make for a consistent product.
If you get raw milk from a farmer, it may have 5% milk fat or 3%.
People like consistent texture and flavor.
In the U.S., whole milk must be [at least 3.25% milkfat](https://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/cdrh/cfdocs/cfcfr/CFRSearch.cfm?fr=131.110), though I think the most common is around 3.5%. Most dairies actually fully separate the milkfat from all milk then add back the correct amount for each level (1%, 2%, whole, half-and-half, cream), so skim milk is actually *less* processed than whole, but non-homogenized (e.g. cream top) milks and some smaller dairies might actually sell unmodified milk as their “whole.”
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