The taste or lack thereof depends entirely on what you’re used to. I drink semi-skimmed 1.5% milk; 0% milk tastes really bland and ~3% milk is way too sweet and rich-tasting. But IME it doesn’t take long for your taste to adjust to either lower or higher fat content. Anyway, to me it makes perfect sense to separate the cream for other uses (what would be the alternative of selling the skimmed milk? Just throwing it away?)

I'm surprised anyone would actually want to drink skimmed milk. Semi-skimmed at least still tastes like milk, but skimmed tastes very watery (to me, at least).

> what would be the alternative of selling the skimmed milk? Just throwing it away?

Huh, hadn't thought of it that way!

Some people (myself included) just prefer the taste of skim milk. I know it’s not healthier - compared to whole milk, it doesn’t fill you up but it has the same amount of sugar and almost the same amount of calories - but I still enjoy it more.

As bizarre as it sounds it is possible to buy lactose-free whole milk (from cows) that has half the sugar of skim. (It's still more calories per serving.)

My daughter is lactose intolerant and drinks this - it does indeed have less sugar, and the taste is still really similar to normal whole milk.

One case where I like skimmed milk is when I'm using it to accompany a peanut butter, banana, and honey sandwich. I get plenty of fat from the peanut butter, and a modest amount of healthier unrefined sugar from the banana and honey, but in that context my meal doesn't need the extra calories from the milk fat and already has enough strong flavours that the milder taste of skimmed milk works well.

And yes, I use the natural kind of peanut butter with just peanuts and sometimes salt. The bread is commercial loaf bread but of a healthier variety than white, with several whole grains and nontrivial protein, for example.