The Grocery Store Is a Trap House
Think Piece • August 2026
The Grocery Store Is a Trap House
Do We Really Want Drug Dealers on Our Block?
Alright, good people, let's get right into this.
First, what in the world is a trap house?
For those who may not be familiar, a “trap house” is a slang term used to describe a house where highly processed plant materials and chemical compounds, also known as illegal drugs, are sold. Instead of the dealer standing exposed on the block, everything is moved inside. The house becomes a convenient, one-stop location where customers can quickly access the product.
The business model depends on three things, or so I'm told: convenience, repeat customers, and a product that keeps people coming back.
Now that we understand what a trap house is, would you want one on your block? If law enforcement raided the house and shut it down, would you petition the police department to bring it back?
I believe, or at least I hope, that most of us agree that we do not want harmful substances being pushed into our communities.
So, if we agree on that, I have a question that may get me kicked out of a few community meetings:
Why do we treat corporate grocery stores so differently than a trap house?
I can see the eye rolls already. Stay with me.
A grocery store is not a public health institution. It is a retail business. Yes, grocery stores sell fresh produce, meat, medicine, household supplies, and other necessities. Those things matter. But the store's primary job is not to build community health. Its job is to move products, many of them harmful, and make money.
Many of the most profitable products are cheap, convenient, shelf-stable, heavily marketed, and designed to keep us coming back.
Like a trap house.
Let's be precise because the truth is already strong enough without exaggerating it.
A 2023 study published in Nature Communications estimated that more than 73% of the U.S. food supply is ultra-processed. According to a 2025 data brief from the CDC's National Center for Health Statistics, ultra-processed foods accounted for approximately 53% of calories consumed by adults and 62% of calories consumed by children and adolescents between August 2021 and August 2023.
To go further: some breads, baked goods, candies, sauces, and meats legally sold in American grocery stores could not be sold in the same form legally in Canada or the European Union because they contain additives or were produced using methods prohibited in those markets.
The problem is not that food has been processed. The problem is that our food environment is dominated by products formulated around profit instead of nourishment.
That does not mean every processed food is harmful. Frozen vegetables, canned beans, yogurt, bread, and many other processed foods can be affordable and nutritious. It also does not mean something is healthy simply because it is labeled “organic” or “natural.”
Walmart offers CONVENIENCE at a relatively low price. That's it!
What it does not offer is food sovereignty.
I am not going to lie. I still shop at grocery stores. I just shop at them a lot less these days.
I have realized that grocery stores are filled with “food-like products” that I do not necessarily need. I purchase many of them because they fit my busy lifestyle. Cereal, chips, coffee creamer, frozen meals, and snacks are not always bought because they nourish me. They are bought because they are fast, familiar, easy, and I got a sweet tooth.
And that is the trap.
Convenience is not bad by itself. For a parent working two jobs, an elder with limited mobility, or someone riding the bus with children and grocery bags, convenience can be the difference between eating and not eating.
We should never shame people for choosing food that fits their time, transportation, budget, cooking equipment, or current reality.
But we should question a system that makes the least nourishing options the cheapest, easiest, most familiar, and most heavily promoted choices available.
That brings me to Northwest Aurora.
In June 2024, the Walmart Neighborhood Market at East Colfax Avenue and Havana Street closed. The community, including me, was up in arms.
“This is an injustice.”
“This is food apartheid.”
“We are becoming a food desert.”
Residents had legitimate reasons to be angry. People lost an affordable and familiar place to purchase groceries, medicine, and household supplies. Some residents had to travel farther, pay more, or depend more heavily on public transportation.
That loss was real.
But here is where I believe our analysis fell short.
We acted as if replacing Walmart with another corporate grocery store would solve the underlying problem. We treated the return of a big-box retailer as the finish line instead of asking why one corporation held so much control over our community's access to basic necessities in the first place.
We did not lose a community-owned food cooperative.
We did not lose a neighborhood distribution system connected to Colorado farmers.
We did not lose a family farm that had nourished residents for 50 years.
We lost Walmart! Walmart, people!
Walmart? We're talking about Walmart right now?
Shout out to Allen Iverson.
Yo… we know Walmart ain't sh*t.
Just two blocks east of the closed Walmart is Lowe's Mercado, a full-service Hispanic grocery store at East Colfax Avenue and Ironton Street. So why wasn't this store counted in our conversations as a food access point?
I have shopped there, and I have to admit that my first few visits were a culture shock. I did not recognize many of the brands. I did not immediately understand the layout. It was not as familiar or convenient to me as Walmart. But it carried all the essential food items Walmart carried, and much of it was better quality.
That experience forced me to examine what I meant when I said Northwest Aurora had no food and was a “food desert.”
Food is here! It is just not always convenient. It is not always familiar, and it is not wrapped in the corporate familiarity we have been trained to expect.
That does not mean Lowe's Mercado can replace everything residents lost when Walmart closed. One store cannot serve every cultural community, meet every household need, or overcome every barrier involving price, transportation, language, store hours, and product selection.
It does mean that food access is more complicated than counting grocery stores on a map.
Access is necessary.
Access alone is not food sovereignty.
So, am I saying we should eliminate grocery stores?
No. Not really.
I am saying that we should stop treating the arrival of another corporate grocery store as our highest vision for community health.
Most importantly, a void creates opportunity! It creates an opportunity for the community to own enough of the food system that one corporation cannot leave and throw the entire neighborhood into crisis.
The trap is not that people shop at grocery stores.
The trap is believing that consumer choice inside someone else's store is the same thing as community power.
The trap is accepting a food system that sells us convenience while extracting our money, weakening local ownership, disconnecting us from the land, and leaving us dependent on corporations that can abandon the neighborhood whenever the numbers stop working for them.
Instead of only asking “Who will replace Walmart?” we should also be asking: What will replace our dependence on Walmart?
That is the real work.
Food sovereignty means that the people who eat the food have power over how it is grown, purchased, prepared, distributed, and shared. It means building a system that does more than prevent hunger. It builds health, relationships, skills, ownership, dignity, and resilience.
A corporate grocery store may be one tool in that system, but it cannot be the whole toolbox.
We have food access here in Northwest Aurora. The question is: Are we CURRENTLY using these access points? Below is a simple access map showing grocery stores, cultural markets, and convenience stores throughout ZIP codes 80010 and 80011. I am sure I missed a few stores, but the point remains: there is food in this community. There is better food in this community than what Walmart was offering. We just need to step outside our comfort zones and explore.
Grocery Stores, Cultural Markets, and Convenience Stores in 80010 and 80011
We do not need another dealer deciding what our community gets to consume.
We need to build supply lines of our own.
And if we want clean food, WE gotta get dirty.
James
Selber-Hnatiw, S. et al. “Machine Learning Prediction of the Degree of Food Processing.” Nature Communications, 2023.
Hales, C.M., Carroll, M.D., Fryar, C.D., and Ogden, C.L. “Ultra-Processed Food Intake Among U.S. Adults and Children, 2021–2023.” CDC National Center for Health Statistics Data Brief, 2025.