What are the real differences between Fat Free, Skim, 1%, 2%, and Whole Milk?
The amount of fat. Whole milk is basically milk in its natural state (Other than pasteurization). 1% and 2% are the amount of fat in the milk. Fat free should be obvious, although I’m not sure there is a difference between fat free and skim.
it’s also homogenized to keep it from separating, but that doesn’t change the fat content.
Thanks, and Zombie that link helped me a lot, the chart it has is really informative.
I can milk my own at home better.
I am reminded of the city boy on a farm visit who wanted to know how they got the bull to put milk in the bottles. 
“Fat free” is an alternate marketing term for “skim”. It sounds better to some consumer’s ears.
Note that “whole” milk (in the US) is not milk as it came from the cow (plus pastuerization/homogenization). The butterfat is taken out and then added back in at a controlled level.
The natural butterfat levels of raw milk varies quite a bit by breed, feed, time of year, age, etc. It’s just easier to remove it and then add a certain amount to get a set value.
E.g., Jerseys can produce milk that’s nearly 5% butter fat while Holsteins generally max out at 3.2%. OTOH Holsteins have higher total milk production. Protein levels don’t vary nearly as much.
You forgot “and cheaper”.
Some friends of the family have a dairy farm, and their cows can produce as much as 7% fat content. Let me tell you, that’s some really rich-tasting milk.
On the nonfat point, some nonfat milks will add additional milk solids (mostly protein) to make up for the lost flavor from the fat.
I used to be able to buy 5% pasteurized milk in the stores, but I can’t find it any more.
Side facts: The increasing prevalence of de-fatted milk led to a surplus of milkfat, which turned to cheese production, which led to cheese overproduction and subsidies, which led to largely government-pushed use of cheese, which turned cheese from a sometime largely snack or hors-d’oeuvre item to a major dietary element in the US, which has contributed mightily to the overall swelling of meal calories and fat in the general diet.
Cheese was not a common ingredient in US cooking and meals until after WWII. Not unknown, but not anywhere near as universal as today.
I have many doubts about cheese’s role in bad health, as seen in this chart, but one thing that is true is the rise of whey.
Whey is the liquid part of milk that is the by-product of cheesemaking. For a long time whey was thrown out or used as feed supplement. Finally, the food scientists realized that it retained the lactose and the whey protein. Those each formed the basis of industries devoted to using them, raising the total profits from a gallon of milk.
The line from Armour, the pork baron, was that they used “everything but the squeal.” (Ironically, getting industry up to the same standards as thousands of years of peasants.) It took the milk farmers surprisingly long to figure this out but they finally got there.
Whether or not you want to assess cheese as ‘bad food’ or not, it is extremely high in fat and has a few other potentially detrimental ingredients. Like HFCS, it may not be the item itself but that it’s heaped into absolutely EVERYTHING, whether there’s any traditional taste or use for it there or not. So cheese in cheese dish… meh. HFCS as a replacement for other sugars… probably meh.
Cheese added to food products, especially the vast array of frozen/prepared items? Added fat and calories for the sake of tastebud hits. HFCS ladled into products for the same bliss-point effect? Added calories for no good nutritional reason.
Isn’t there also a rising glut of (acidified) whey from greek yogurt production? I’d bet all the work finding purposes for whey more closely parallels getting people to eat up excess cheese(fat) than any realization it was an inherently Good Thing.
What peasants do to survive and thrive need have nothing to do with how our inter/national food production system delivers wholesome/healthy/tasty stuff for us to eat. The latter is driven more by the unending economic war between food conglomerates than anything else.
Yes, but do you grow your own cows?
Thank the lord. Cheese is the best.
Yes, from scratch. Apartment living at its best.
Are you thinking of Promised Land brand milk?
As someone who is lactose intolerant I’m eternally aware of how many foods have cheese added to make up for the lack of flavor in the base food. It drives me crazy daily. But that’s a different issue than cheese’s complicity in disease, where even correlation much less causation is hard to find. Not to mention that despite the increased use of cheese as mouthfeel, U.S. cheese consumption is fairly low compared to other countries. Both of our statements can be correct.
Living in the yogurt capital of America - milk is doing better than oil for western New York’s rural economy - where evidence of increased production is almost as high as the snow mounds at the end of my driveway, whey is no doubt increasing as a by-product. But there’s no glut. Whey prices have soared over the past few years because of increased international demand. It’s all being snapped up.
I don’t think that’s available in Portland. I think the 5% I’m talking about was distributed by Darigold years ago.
This is probably obvious to most but it wasn’t to me way back when. That is, ‘Lowfat Milk’ that is described as 1% or 2% does NOT mean that it is regular whole milk with 99 or 98% of its fat removed. It means that it is 1 or 2% fat as opposed to whole milk’s being 3.25% fat. Not nearly as ‘low fat’ sounding when you think of it this way…