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Consumer preference around food is largely steeped in tradition – i.e. people generally eat what they grew up eating. It is quite possible that a tradition was

Consumer preference around food is largely steeped in tradition – i.e. people generally eat what they grew up eating. It is quite possible that a tradition was lost over the generations due to the species decline. In other words, the grocery store might be full of them today if they had remained abundant. That said, chestnut trees were only ever common in the depths of Southern Ontario. And a quick search suggests that some grocery stores in that region do carry chestnuts, so it seems the tradition has remained alive to some degree.

throwawaaarrgh 3y ago
Actually, consumer preferences around food is based on marketing and availability. Most of the food people eat today changed after WW2, due to changes in the food distribution chain, and the forces of advertising. We don't eat much of what we did 100 years ago. People today buy what's in the grocery store, and what's in the grocery store is there based on what sells, which is based on what a given industry has convinced us to buy and what can be shipped to us for cheap without going bad. Some foods are a local specialty or tradition, but most are less than a century old. It's equally likely that the chestnut's availability in Southern Ontario is merely a byproduct of being easy to store and ship a nut all over the Americas. Grocery store owners may offer it merely because they want to provide a variety of nuts, with almost nobody buying them. Grocery stores often stock items that don't make them any money and are rarely bought, because it contributes to the consumer interest in supermarkets that "have everything", even if consumers only typically purchase 5% of the selection in the store.