> Also there is a thing with Americans, they just buy milk. I can't buy "just" milk. I can buy 1%, 1.5%, 3.5% and (my preferred) ~3.5-4% fat milk.

Huh? A pretty typical US grocery store has skim, 1%, 2%, and whole (3.5%), each conventional or organic, and in a fancier grocery there’s generally a higher-fat organic option as well.

Of course it has a wide selection, but my point is what some part of Americans (who as beforementioned "didn't like milk", not every one, of course) don't even understand what milk comes in a different fat content selection.

If that was a just a random encounter on my own I wouldn't even bother with making any conclusions, but I've seen it many times, incidentally some of them was after tasting milk in some other country, like in th GP comment.

It is interesting thing on its own, why there is a such phenomen and as I understand part of it is attributed to the plain old povetry (hence skimmed milk diluted with water) but tgere was an overall change in the mindset about how and how many milk should be consumed somewere around the middle of 20 th c. in the USA.

I could made the part about "some Americans" clearer, as evident by downvotes, but ehat is done...

Huh? There are no Americans like this that I know of. You become acquainted with it in elementary school because you get your selection of milks in the lunch line and you will rue the day you choose skim milk over whole if you aren't familiar with the terms.

Have you been to Iceland? When I visited a few years back, the grocer had a massive wall of “milk”. All the usually skim, low-fat, whole, etc. And also a massive selection of sour milks and milk-yogurt-cream things.

As I don’t speak Icelandic, I grabbed a sour milk by mistake. It was horrific. Into the trash it went. And back to the store I went.

Well, my native cuisine has a lot of milk products of... different sourness. I couldn't make such mistake because I know the difference of the viscosity and how the bottle handles by the guts. *smile*

> But the packaging itself matters, eg soda in a Al can and a glass bottle is perceived quite differently.

I agree with that. When container-touches-mouth I think there surely must be some electrochemistry involved that makes the drink from the aluminum can taste ... metallic.

Or it's all in my head. (But that too is important.)

With carbonated beverages, canned seems the most strongly-carbonated to me, followed closely by plastic bottles, then glass which seems much milder. Maybe the caps on glass leak more CO2.

... of course that could all be in my head.

Just an FYI, but aluminium cans are lined with a plastic lacquer - so what you are tasting isn't from metal.

I know, hence "perceived".

Still, my lips are on the can and if I fill the glass from the said can it tastes more "glassy" than "metallic".

As a sibling comment says - it's all in our heads *shrug_emoji*