This chapter discusses the ways in which food plays an important role in the construction of national identities and diasporic culture through a close reading of Sara Suleri’s memoir Meatless Days and Anita Desai’s novel Fasting, Feasting. By interrogating the economies of taste and the politics of consumption, the texts function as a critique of the nation-state; uncovering how food operates on gender and revealing to what extent it embodies or subverts national and diasporic culture. The chapter undertakes a critical inquiry into the complex relationship of food to nation, culture, and diasporas, and the ways in which gender, class, and ethnicity are produced and articulated through culinary negotiations. It also examines the gendered construction of national and diasporic subjects in culinary terms that justifies the pathologizing of women who are believed to be more susceptible to eating disorders, are considered to be of frail constitution, and are thought to be vulnerable to certain kinds of alimentary pollutants that threaten the purity and the continuity of the nation. The narratives recognize how food, femininity, and masculinity construct each other and how food is used to gain control over bodies and assert cultural power both in the nation-state and in the diaspora.