In the U.S., “skim” legally means 1% millkfat. (A lot of food labeling in the U.S. is defined by government regulation, to make it standard across the nation.) It’s ghastly grey-coloured water, and I won’t drink it, even if that’s all there is to drink. The lowest amount of fat in milk that I can tolerate is 2%. Whole milk is 3% milkfat.
There are similar percentages for defining “light” cream, “heavy” cream, and what we call “half and half” (which, in theory, is supposed to be half cream, half whole milk). British creams contain slightly more fat, and there is also the lovely category of “double” cream, which is like U.S. heavy cream, only much more so.
(For those who might enjoy the story, one of the American consumer magazines published a hilarious article, twenty or thirty years ago, describing the terms for labelling types of cheese, as defined by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. They ran from plain “cheese”—the natural, basic product—all the way to something called “pasteurized process cheese food spread”—which comes in a spray can. Each descriptor means something specific, and the more descriptors, the less resemblance the product bears to the real thing. The article was hilarious, as I mentioned, but at the same time it was horrifying.)