The old school recipes have a 1 : 1 sugar to fruit ratio, so you’re looking at 50% of your jam being sugar.
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The sugar is the preservative in jam. Well, that and the heat.
Jam should store for a very long time if unopened, having gone into a sealed container while hot and sterile there should be no bugs left in the jam itself (Pasteur’s flasks show that - in fact ISTR that the Science Museum has an original flask with unspoilt contents from his experiments in 1864.
Once opened jam should be consumed fairly rapidly - fungi (as noted) are usually the only contaminants that can grow in the high sugar content.
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This probably holds for the cheaper jams, but the premium ones advertise 65% or more of fruit.
Hence my choice of “process”
I wonder if cheaper ingredients are used in some cases like high fructose corn starch in replacement of cane sugar etc.
Depends how you work it out - what they usually say is “prepared with xx grammes of fruit per 100g of product, final sugar content yy grammes per 100g” - which is not quite the same as saying “xx grammes of fruit per 100g of product”.
Final sugar content seems to be about 60g for “extra fruit” jams and 65g for “ordinary” jams.
Not yet ready.
When I inherited the house I now live in there was confiture de prune from 1981. Slightly too sweet for me but it was good to eat. Sugar at high levels inhibits bacteria growth.
Honey from the Egyptian pyramids has been eaten without adverse effects.
Yogurts can be safely eaten up to two weeks after the use by date. There’s even a fr gov site that says so but can’t find it now. It’s because it’s classed as a fresh milk product like cream or creme fraich but the bacteria makes it last longer.
Always a strange one yoghurt, I suppose 1 classification is not sufficient as there are variables, real natural yoghurt is made with the bacteria and according to my Turkish in laws doesnt go off as they use the old as a starter for the new. Whereas mass produced processed non natural yoghurt is different so the classification may have disapeared along with the sense behind it?
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Way to much sugar to put in my body these days.
I don’t think you’re supposed to eat the whole jar at one sitting. 
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Ahh thats where I went wrong 
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That jar has been going since the spring, just used on hot cross buns or toasted fruit bread for my wife’s breakfast on a Saturday morning.
I think I have eaten some at least a month past the date.
Dates are best when they are eaten.
See what you did there
You cant see them because I ate them.
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It’s polite to wait until the third date.
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Come on Jane, you should make your own. My wife worked in a jam factory as a summer job many moons ago, she hasn’t touched factory jams since. I, on the other hand , am very partial to Roses Lemon & Lime Marmalade.