One factor, I would imagine, would be whether one regularly drinks milk. To someone who doesn’t I would imagine that the differences aren’t necessarily that huge.
When I was a kid I probably drank a half gallon of milk a day (whole) and even 2% (at school) was disgustingly thin. Now that I very rarely drink milk, I can see that the distinction might slip past me. Though I can’t imagine that I’d fail to note the difference between skim and whole, as that seems kind of like not being able to tell if your toast is buttered.
But I’ve never blind tested myself so I certainly could be wrong.
You know, I bet this is a highly relevant factor here. Perhaps revulsion kicks in before all other reactions, and you just don’t pick up on the mouth-feel/taste the way a connoisseur would
Yet the reason for the research was not to prove that whole milk tasted different than skim; they felt no more need to prove that than, as in my example, to prove that lamb tastes different than beef. The reason was to experiment with methods to make skim taste more like whole, like in my wife’s preferred “Skim Plus” product, by adding nonfat milk solids (adding powdered or evaporated milk or partially evaporating the product). Most grew up with whole milk and prefer its taste/feel; a nonfat product that is more similar to that can demand some amount of a price premium.
I’d be far more surprised if there were regular milk drinkers who couldn’t tell the difference. Whole and skim milk may as well be entirely different drinks.
I think this is the key. I am the same way with beer. My husband has had me try many different kinds in an attempt to find one I like but to me the overwhelming taste of all of them is “beer” I’ve tried everything from cheap watery beer to guiness and while I acknowledge that they’re different I couldn’t label them or have any success in determining that I was tasting the same one because the first thing I taste is YECH! and everything else is fairly minor comparatively.
Milk? I drink 1% now after years of weaning myself down from whole milk (3.5%). It’s still a nice treat if I get milk at a restaurant and they serve 2% but I can’t drink whole milk anymore. I also can’t under any circumstance drink skim. It’s just too much like not milk.
I don’t know if I could tell the difference between 1% and 2% milk. but I can DEFINITELY tell the difference between skim (nonfat) and whole. We were raised drinking skim milk, but my father liked whole milk. If I got a glass of his by mistake, I found it pretty nasty because it wasn’t what I was used to. Much thicker mouthfeel.
Not that I “like” any kind of milk, really, but I can tolerate the nonfat stuff.
As a side anecdote: us human cows give (gave, in my case) full-fat milk. If you pump and save the milk, you find that just like cow’s milk, the cream would rise and it has to be shaken to mix it up. And the color difference was just like cow’s milk (faint blue-ish tinge to the watery part, yellowish creamy tinge to the cream). Moooooooo.
Milk that is still warm straight from the cow is something that I don’t think I could do now. Used to drink a fair bit of that when I was a kid. Well, until the brucellosis kicked in.
If you shook them in an identical carton, the skimmed milk would slosh more readily than whole, same as plain water would slosh more readily than a thin smoothie. However, it wouldn’t be as noticeable as the smell, taste, and mouth-feel that I’m glad someone finally mentioned.
IOW, you think she is wrong, but for understandable reasons, not deliberate. That’s what ‘people have misapprehensions’ mean.
One of the reasons people have responded quickly without a cite is that, to them, the difference is so very obvious - it’s not something you’d expect a huge number of surveys on, same as (like someone else said) you wouldn’t expect people to be able to tell the difference between lamb and beef.
Though I’d argue that the difference is actually bigger, because these days milk is served in one way and one way only as opposed to frying/stewing/grilling/etc, so your tastebuds have more time to get fine-tuned to how this specific item tastes compared to this other one.
Exactly. Imagine someone being skeptical about people being able to detect the difference between looseleaf paper and corrugated cardboard–and then demanding studies to back up their assertions.
Another factor is storage in a store cooler. Whole milk, if stored near fluorescent lights, gets the dreaded “light-struck” flavor defect. Skim, stored similarly, does not get the defect as badly.
A lot of milk brands in the '60s and '70s added extra non-fat dry milk to improve the mouth feel. I’m not familiar with Hood’s Smart sense, but Meadow Gold had Viva and Dean’s had Vim brand fat reduced milks. It was more viscous, hence closer to whole milk in mouthfeel.
The drawback of this approach is that NFDM picks up every little odor around, and a lot of fortified skim can be produced before anyone realizes there’s a bad off-flavor.
I don’t understand. So you’re expending all this time and psychological energy … on a product you don’t even CARE about?
I was assuming you were some sort of Milk Gourmet that was willing to brave the insults of the Dope because you just HAD to know about minute differences between Milk Conniseurs. That this was more important than your hobbies and your relationships.
But, you really hate it? Then WHY do you really care about it so much?
If you swirl a glass of whole milk,it clings to the glass in a way that skimmedilk doesn’t - and this is part if the reason people can tell the difference. The same thing happens in the mouth, creating not only a different mouthfeel, but also allowing you to taste the fat-soluble flavour components more.
I’m surprised this is even a real question. I could see asking about 2vs whole or 1vs2 but skim milk looks so much different from whole I don’t see how someone could be confused let alone how much different it tastes.
I grew up with milk in a long-necked glass bottle. The cream would settle on top. Eventually we got regular whole milk in a carton. That was my favorite. I loved it ice cold. And then abruptly my weight-conscious mother switched to skim milk. I didn’t even get a vote. It was awful! I guess after all of these years, I’ve gotten used to it. But with this thread, it has just now occured to me that I can, at the age of 68, return to whole milk any time that I want to. Why did it take me forty years of independence to remember this? I even have a long-necked glass bottle…
Hmm. Wonder how Pet Milk with Karo syrup would taste. That’s what I used to have in my baby bottle. Yes, I can remember it. I was five years old and still drinking out of a bottle.
