Whole30 Compliant, even in a struggling community/food desert?

[Addi]

I work in a struggling, economically-depressed community. Grocery stores are scarce. If you happen to find one, good healthy options to scarce. Your best bet for food is from the bodega.

So, on Sundays, I cook my food for the week and when I go to the office, I essentially import a mini-fridge of options with me. But some days, I run late or I can't pack my food. So I'm at work, hoping that I can manage to hold hunger at bay and not have to eat something strange from the bodega.

So I wonder, how does one stay Whole30 compliant in the 'hood?

I'm being tongue-in-cheek. In truth, I'm asking, how do you keep compliant when the best option you have is whatever is for purchase at the most basic of convenience stores?

[Tom Denham]

Maybe you can't. The food system was not created to make you healthy. To cope, you probably need a pantry at your office that is stocked with canned goods like tuna, sardines, beets, olives, nuts, raisins, etc. so that you can eat something even if you are stuck.

[Kristina Wright]

I'm not in a food desert, but I spend all day at my university where everything "healthy" is packed with stuff that I don't eat. If it isn't wrapped in whole-grain something, it's topped with peanut butter or cheese or contains some kind of soy product. I pack lunch too, but sometimes (usually) it's not enough to keep me full all day and I'm ready to chew my steering wheel on the way home.

I'd say canned food and nonperishables would be the answer. If you brought a bunch of bananas or some apples and a big bag of nuts you'd be stocked with snacks all week long. Canned olives or tuna and a can opener would be easy fixes as well.

I don't know if your minifridge is metaphorical or literal, but if you actually do have a mini-fridge in your office all to yourself, do you have enough room in there to stock the whole week's worth of food on a Monday? If you didn't individually portion everything, you could probably fit it all in there and just keep a bowl/plate and flatware in a desk drawer.

I also pack lunch the night before. It brings me back to my middle school days when my mother had to nag me constantly to pack up ahead of time to avoid the morning freakout, but it definitely works wonders.

[kew]

That sounds like quite a challenge! If your bodega doesn't have canned fish (without soy) or nuts (without seed oils), perhaps it at least has raisins and apple sauce? Canned vegetables of some sort? That's not going to satisfy your protein and fat needs, however.

(I have been known to wash a packet of nuts when I didn't want so much salt; perhaps you could do that with some nuts that are roasted in a noncompliant oil? Not perfect -- and if you are like me, you will feel mighty silly doing it -- but perhaps better than going crazy with some totally noncompliant jerky?)

Sunflower seeds in the shell? If you open them with your fingers instead of your teeth, you would get very little of whatever might be noncompliant on the shells.