All humans until about a century ago lived without a fridge, as do many today. Coming up on three years with my fridge unplugged, I ferment a lot, and learn other ways to keep foods from going bad.

Jams, jellies, and preserves were ways to keep fruits from going bad. Now that everyone has fridges and we ship produce around the world, we can get fresh fruit all the time. Jellies, jams, and preserves add a bunch of straight sugar to fruit and make them less fresh.

Buying jams, jellies, and preserves is less healthy than fresh fruit. I see people storing them in their fridges for years.

To recap: people today buy a less healthy product designed to preserve something that we now can buy fresh all the time and we pollute to provide energy to keep from going bad something designed to keep things from going bad.

I can’t see a way around concluding this change just made life less healthy, more polluting, more expensive, more dependent, and less delicious. It seems worse in every way.

I recommend making chutney instead, avoiding sugar, and not buying jams, jellies, or preserves. I didn’t learn to ferment growing up. No one in my family did. I didn’t know you could.

Now I always have a jar or more of chutney fermenting, a few jars of kombucha going, some hot sauce I make from habaneros, scotch bonnets, or what peppers I get my hands on, and sauerkraut. I just figured it out by not being willing to let food go bad.

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