Keeping food frozen costs money. It also risks spoilage if the freezing temporarily fails, which is hard to test for later. If jam is obsolete, it’s only for sufficiently rich first world families.
Also, many people like sweet spreads and use jams regardless of their preservation properties.
It doesn’t cost very much money, depending on your circumstances. In the US, most houses have a large unfinished area where space is not a premium and there’s plenty of space to put a chest freezer. For ~$500 you can get a 15 ft.³ chest freezer that should last 10+ years, or under $4/month. At 300kWh/y it’s using $2-5/month in electricity. So each cubic foot of frozen food costs ~$0.60/month. This is extremely cheap, and easily pays for itself by letting you buy food when it is on sale / in season.
It also risks spoilage if the freezing temporarily fails, which is hard to test for later.
That is a risk, but if you’re keeping your freezer at 0F (standard) you have quite a long time for it to get up to 32F in the event of a power outage, as long as you leave it closed.
If jam is obsolete, it’s only for sufficiently rich first world families.
Jam is obsolete for the median American family today, and more of the world every year?
many people like sweet spreads
I think we generally haven’t adjusted for sugar being something that’s important to limit. People definitely like it, but they often think of it as fruit or still reasonably healthy, and not as candy. I have no objection at all to someone putting jam on things because they love it and it’s worth the sugar to them, but at least in my family growing up we thought of it is just another thing you might spread on food, like butter, peanut butter, or cheese.
Electricity use isn’t the only ongoing factor, though: consider that freezers are somewhat bulky appliances—you can imagine e.g. in an environment where rent is high, there’s an additional ongoing cost of physically having a refrigerator taking up floorspace. If your refrigerator has a floor footprint of about square metre, cost can go up to $60 or more just to have it in your space—an order of magnitude more than electricity cost. So there’s a much larger ongoing cost that will dominate that effect.
As I wrote above, in the US most houses have a large unfinished area where space is not a premium and there’s plenty of space to put a chest freezer. For example, my house has a ~1000 sqft basement, which can’t be legally finished (and is somewhat damp). We have the washer, dryer, freezer, water tank, electrical panel, gas meters, and furnace down there, but there’s still tons of extra space which is empty / storage.
Places without basements typically have garages, which are similarly cheap.
Keeping food frozen costs money. It also risks spoilage if the freezing temporarily fails, which is hard to test for later. If jam is obsolete, it’s only for sufficiently rich first world families.
Also, many people like sweet spreads and use jams regardless of their preservation properties.
It doesn’t cost very much money, depending on your circumstances. In the US, most houses have a large unfinished area where space is not a premium and there’s plenty of space to put a chest freezer. For ~$500 you can get a 15 ft.³ chest freezer that should last 10+ years, or under $4/month. At 300kWh/y it’s using $2-5/month in electricity. So each cubic foot of frozen food costs ~$0.60/month. This is extremely cheap, and easily pays for itself by letting you buy food when it is on sale / in season.
That is a risk, but if you’re keeping your freezer at 0F (standard) you have quite a long time for it to get up to 32F in the event of a power outage, as long as you leave it closed.
Jam is obsolete for the median American family today, and more of the world every year?
I think we generally haven’t adjusted for sugar being something that’s important to limit. People definitely like it, but they often think of it as fruit or still reasonably healthy, and not as candy. I have no objection at all to someone putting jam on things because they love it and it’s worth the sugar to them, but at least in my family growing up we thought of it is just another thing you might spread on food, like butter, peanut butter, or cheese.
Electricity use isn’t the only ongoing factor, though: consider that freezers are somewhat bulky appliances—you can imagine e.g. in an environment where rent is high, there’s an additional ongoing cost of physically having a refrigerator taking up floorspace. If your refrigerator has a floor footprint of about square metre, cost can go up to $60 or more just to have it in your space—an order of magnitude more than electricity cost. So there’s a much larger ongoing cost that will dominate that effect.
As I wrote above, in the US most houses have a large unfinished area where space is not a premium and there’s plenty of space to put a chest freezer. For example, my house has a ~1000 sqft basement, which can’t be legally finished (and is somewhat damp). We have the washer, dryer, freezer, water tank, electrical panel, gas meters, and furnace down there, but there’s still tons of extra space which is empty / storage.
Places without basements typically have garages, which are similarly cheap.