For those who don't know: when milk is milked out of the cow it goes through some processing, like pasteurization and separation. When milk separates the fat floates to the top and it is "skimmed" off. You can have 'whole' fat in your milk, as in they only take off the very top part of cream on top. Then you can have your 'skim' milk with no fat. Then you can add back in a percentage of the fat. This is where the most common 1% and 2% come in. In theory you can make whatever percentage milk you want. This is also where something like half and half comes in, half cream added back to half milk for a 50% ish mix.
Is it really called 2% milk? That seems inverted tbh since it's obviously 98% milk and 2% fat. Here (NZ) we call it something like "trim" or "skim" or "98% fat free"
It's milk that the company has extracted all the nutrients from, and replaced them with sugar. Now you get expensive sugar water, and they can sell the good stuff in other products such as whipped cream, heavy cream, and butter.
Edit: apparently the higher sugar content in skim and nonfat milk is because the removal of fat concentrates the remaining lactose. They don't add additional sugar. The original point still remains though, that it's mostly just milk flavored sugar water.
The answer above that called the other 98% "mystery fun" was far more informative than this fabrication.
Pasteurization is a very, very important process for keeping humans safe. Nobody should be framing it as "extracting the nutrients". This is especially true right now in the US, since dairy cows in multiple states have tested positive for bird flu. Their milk has been confirmed to have the virus in it, but it's dead virus thanks to Pasteurization.
I'm not talking about pasteurization. Whole, skim, and nonfat milk can all be pasteurized. I'm talking about them taking all of the nutritious natural fats out of the milk and replacing it with sugar to make skim and nonfat milk.
Even if you don't care about the ethics, plant milk is getting cheap (oat milk is cheaper than cows milk where i live), tastes good, has a longer shelf life and has thus far worked perfectly as a replacement in baking and such
How do you get over the nutty aftertaste? Every milk derivative I have tried, always tasted really really bad compared to regular milk. Trust me, I want to go plant milk, but goodness the taste is awful for me.
Is it 3x cheaper? Because cow’s milk contains 3x the protein of oat milk per cup (250ml). If you’re drinking milk as a source of protein then oat milk isn’t going to be a good substitute.
Filtered milk is what I buy and it has a shelf life of about a month. That’s plenty for me since I go through a 4L bag in less than a week anyway.
Or if you ethically prioritize "the environment" over the individual victims of the industry, plant milk has a way smaller footprint. Even the worst one (almond milk, iirc) is way better than milk from animals