Ideas for packed lunches/dinners

I'm not real knowledgeable on the gluten free stuff, so if I say something that doesn't work it is because I didn't know. My first thought is tuna out of the can, I used to keep a can opener at work and I would eat it right out of the can, does not need to be refrigerated. If you could do nuts, they would be good, protein powder can be mixed with water at anytime. Chicken precooked would be good, cold or not.

If you pack things into nice clean containers using nice clean utensils, I've eaten all of these things 6-8 hours after I packed them away. I typically don't put my lunch in the work fridge because it's a nasty place. Just put any of these in the fridge the night before, so the entire lunch pail is cold. Then keep it out of the sun.

individually wrapped mozzarella cheese sticks
dried fruit
most fruit
cut up raw vegies like carrots, celery and sweet red peppers
chunked-up deli meat
chuncked-up cooked chicken breast
"Cold spaghetti" salad made from spiral-ized zucchini and basil tomato sauce (search for something like the Joyce Chen Vegetable Spiral Slicer)

And finally:
Greek yogurt with FROZEN berries added to it just before you leave in the morning will stay cold 6-8 hours with the rest of the above packed into an insulated lunch pail. And the berries will thaw by lunch time.

I'm a student who will be on campus for 8 hours with no real lunch break starting pretty soon, so I will remember to look at this again for ideas.

When I said keep it out of the sun, I meant keep the lunch pail out of direct rays of the sunlight, of course the car will have sun on it. It's daytime, right?

What do you WANT to eat that you feel you can't? Maybe that would help us tailor our answers better. Everyone wants to help.

I have square cooler packs, but will look into getting more gel based packs since they can conform around things.

As to what do I want to eat- I'm not entirely sure. When I used to work my food choices were terrible. I would eat chips and soda and crap all shift long. This is my first time returning to work in over 8 months, and kind of lost in what choices I should bring. As for it being day-not always. My shifts run either afternoon into the overnight, or over night into the morning. Not trying to be difficult, just unsure.

Just asking again to make sure you saw part of my post. So you can or cannot bring cut up vegetables? Not leafy ones, they wilt. But crunchier ones, like carrots, celery, sweet pepper, asparagus, etc...

Well that's where the packages of hummus or peanut butter come in. You dip them in the prepackaged peanut butter or pate or whatever. That way you're getting more calories.

I'm really trying to think of other things that may work for you.

Perhaps there are some items that some of the Paleo folks adhere to that would work for good snacks and meals that'd last longer -- Paleo is gluten free because wheat / grain processing started after the paleolithic time. I'm sure some of the suggestions would be things we've said - fruits, veggies, nuts - but there may be some other things I can't think of off the top of my head - maybe like jerkies (probably homemade jerky, though, so you could control what goes into it) too if you're into that sort of thing.

I threw out Larabar before because of its gluten free status, but actually not everyone likes dates or chewy bars so that may be a to your taste thing. The ones I've had before were peanut butter chocolate chip and the ingredients are dates, peanuts, semisweet chocolate morsels and sea salt. They have others without the date binder too. I'm sure there are other lower calorie ones out there but I'm 99% sure you would be able to eat those if you needed to or wanted something a little later in the day that didn't require any kind of cooling.