semi-skim

[Victor Steinbok]

I was browsing a small cookbook intended for the UK market (and,
possibly, Australian) and came across a reference to "semi-skim milk". I
was not familiar with this terminology. A few years ago, US went through
milk terminology standardization that restricted the use of "low-fat" in
reference to milk. Previously, both 1% (milk fat) and 2% milk could both
be referred to as "low-fat". Now, 2% milk can only be referred to as
"reduced fat" and 1% as "low fat". Of course, this only applies to
commercial expressions and people still use "low-fat" for both,
although, I am sure, the commercial standardization will eventually make
the usage more homogeneous. "Skim" milk traditionally has 0.5% fat or
less--generally getting below 0.5% is hard and may require chemical
assistance.

So I was puzzled when I came across "semi-skim" milk. In principle, the
concept is quite clear--it's the milk with fat content between 0.5%
(skim) and 3% (or more--whole). But I don't know whether standard use
points to a specific percentage or applies to all grades in that range.
I am assuming that skim or "de-fatted" milk is pretty universal. And
whole milk ranges between 3% and 3.6%, although some countries sell 6%
milk--but it's usually labeled as such directly. But between those two,
there are several possibilities and different countries offer different
reduced-fat milk (some sell only 1.5%, some only 2%, others both 1% and
2%, as in US). Since I am not familiar with the term, I don't know if
"semi-skim" refers to a particular type of product (as US "low fat" and
"reduced fat" labels now do), or the entire range of products.

To make things more difficult, neither the OED nor Wiki nor other online
dictionaries offer any clues.

     VS-)

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