Same thing happened in Belgium topinambour and rutabaga left bitter memories to the peoples. You'd be lucky to find any on sale...I think it was fairly widely used in France before WWII. However, when food was rationed, topinambour is basically all that was left unrequisitioned and the French spent four years eating topinambour all the time.
What I'm saying is don't talk about topinambour to the older French population, they might punch you. Probably why it's almost disappeared now