The Ugly Truth and How To Make The Healthiest Plum Jam

Today I'm going to show you how to make the healthiest plum jam, without adding chemicals, preservatives and other unhealthy additives. But before that, let me tell you a few words about how the food industry evolved.

History

Many years ago, when people were growing their own food, sugar was scarce and most of the jams were made without sugar and preservatives. That was possible by cooking the fruits till most of the water evaporated, sometimes for days. That was a good way of making jams but time consuming. I still prefer this method but unfortunately not always have the time to cook for hours.

Then sugar became widely known and available and housewives learned that sugar can preserve fruits. That was a very unhealthy period as most of the jams had 1 : 1 ratio, meaning 1kg sugar to 1kg fruit. This was absolutely crazy, only good if you want to become diabetic.

Today

Today you can have healthy options and popular ones. There are sugar free jams that cost a fortune but at least know there's no sugar or sweetener in it. The other option is to choose blindly, whatever is advertised or on sale.

Look at this one, I found it by running a search, this was the first one that popped up. It's made in New Zealand of imported ingredients.

screenshot source

You don't have to have a degree in math or economics to see what's going on here but if you don't understand, let me break it down for you.

100g product, meaning 100g jam contains 65.2g sugar, which means roughly 2/3 is sugar and only 1/3 plums. No matter how you look at it, this is unacceptable. This is suicide in my opinion, should never happen. I blame law flaws and ignorance. Producers don't care as if the law is not forbidding the excessive use of sugar, they won't change anything. People on the other hand don't care, don't know what to check and how, many are only checking the price and think if it's on the shelf, then it's healthy, complies with the rules.

This is only one example but if you run a search, you'll find that most of the jams have less than 50% fruit, more like 40% and the rest is sugar.

My Healthy Version

I've been planning to make this plum jam for some time but last year the fruit prices were so high it would have been a waste of money to buy plum so expensive. This year I thought it's too early for that but apparently it's not. Yesterday was Sunday, should have been a rest day but I gave up my rest hours to make this jam. I got lucky and got some plums at a very good price, that needed to be cooked right away as they were ripe.

I bought 4.8kg of plums as that was the quantity I thought I have jars for.

After washing the plums, and taking out the seeds, I put them in my stainless steel pot and started to cook at medium heat.

plum jam.jpg

Plum is good with some spices although I don't like to exaggerate, so I only used cinnamon and allspice.

I cooked until it started to thicken, obviously stirring it occasionally, especially at the end when it started to thicken.

The main focus was on eliminating any additives, like thickening agent, gelling agent and/or preservative. When I thought it's thick enough, added some sugar (I'm going to share the quantity and recipe below) and canned the jam. First I microwaved the jars as an extra protection measure, filled each one up to its neck, put the cap on, turned upside down for 5 minutes to disinfect the cap as well. Then turned they up and covered well till the next day.

Here it is, my healthy plum jam with no chemicals and minimal amount of sugar.

Ingredients And Math

4.8kg plum (well ripe),
0.64 kg sugar,
cinnamon,
allspice or other spices you prefer.

Now let's see how much sugar this one contains compared to the other one I showed you earlier.

4.8 kg + 0.64 kg = 5.44kg of which
88.24% is plum (fruit) and 11.76% sugar.

Remember the other one? It had 40% plum and the rest was made up mostly of sugar. Now tell me honestly, why should I accept those high content sugar products that have very little to do with a fruit jam. I can make my own and eat healthy.

When I added the sugar, I had no recipe or any particular plan in my mind, my only plan was to use as little sugar as possible and get an enjoyable jam. I knew for 4.8kg fruit I have to add less than 1kg sugar, if I want to have the sugar content under 25%. So at first I added half, without measuring it and then added a little more. Then I measured the quantity of sugar left of the 1kg, I was amazed that only 0.64kg was needed.

In Conclusion

As I said in the beginning, it was Sunday, should have been a rest day and instead of resting, I made jam for several hours, which I'm proud of. I got 9 jars, full of healthy and yummy plum jams I'm going to enjoy during the winter period. Jars can be reused, that is a plus as you don't have to buy new ones, so by making you own jam you not only get a healthy product but can also save some money.

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