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 fo

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.