Bland, easy-to-digest foods like bananas, plain rice, toast, broth, and boiled potatoes are the best choices for an upset stomach. These foods require minimal effort from your digestive system, won’t trigger extra acid production, and provide enough calories to keep you going while you recover. How quickly you move from liquids to solids matters just as much as what you choose to eat.
Start With Liquids, Then Work Up
Your stomach recovers in stages, and pushing solid food too early can make nausea and vomiting worse. In the first several hours after symptoms begin, stick to ice chips or a plain popsicle. Once those stay down comfortably, move to clear liquids: water, apple juice, grape juice, or broth. Whatever you choose should be flat and clear. Avoid anything carbonated or opaque.
After about 24 hours, if you’re keeping liquids down without trouble, you can start introducing bland solid foods. Most people feel better and return to their normal diet within about a week, though everyone’s timeline is different.
The Best Foods for a Sensitive Stomach
The classic BRAT diet (bananas, rice, applesauce, toast) has been the go-to recommendation for decades, and those four foods are still solid choices. They’re low in fiber, low in fat, and gentle on inflamed tissue. But there’s no reason to limit yourself to just those four items. Harvard Health notes there are no studies showing the BRAT diet works better than a broader bland diet, and eating only bananas, rice, applesauce, and toast for more than a day or two leaves you short on protein and other nutrients you need to heal.
Good options beyond BRAT include:
- Brothy soups like chicken broth or vegetable broth
- Plain oatmeal or unsweetened dry cereal
- Boiled potatoes without butter or toppings
- Saltine crackers or plain grits
- Cooked carrots or squash like butternut or pumpkin
Once your stomach has settled for a full day or two, start adding foods with more nutritional value: skinless chicken or turkey, fish, eggs, avocado, sweet potatoes without skin, and cooked squash. These are still bland and easy to digest but give your body the protein it needs to recover faster.
Why These Foods Work
When your stomach is inflamed, it struggles with two things: breaking down complex foods and managing acid. Low-fat, low-fiber carbohydrates pass through the stomach quickly and require less churning to digest. Fat, by contrast, slows gastric emptying, meaning food sits in your stomach longer and can increase nausea. Fiber adds bulk that your irritated intestines have to work harder to move along.
Simple carbohydrates like white rice, white toast, and plain crackers are essentially pre-simplified for your gut. They break down quickly, absorb easily, and don’t feed the kind of bacterial overgrowth that can worsen bloating and gas. Bananas are particularly useful because they’re soft, calorie-dense, and rich in potassium, a mineral you lose rapidly through vomiting or diarrhea.
Foods That Make It Worse
Some foods actively irritate an already upset stomach. The main categories to avoid until you’re fully recovered:
- Fried and fatty foods: These slow digestion and can intensify nausea.
- Spicy foods: They increase acid production and irritate the stomach lining.
- Red and processed meats: Hard to digest and linked to increased inflammation.
- Sugary foods and sodas: Excess sugar can pull water into the intestines and worsen diarrhea.
- Alcohol: Directly irritates the stomach lining and delays healing.
- Salty snacks and sour foods: Both have been associated with aggravating gastric symptoms.
Dairy is worth mentioning separately. Some people tolerate plain yogurt well during stomach illness, while others find that lactose worsens bloating and diarrhea. If you’re unsure, skip dairy until your symptoms have fully resolved.
Ginger and Peppermint for Nausea
Ginger has a long track record for calming nausea. Ginger tea, ginger chews, or even flat ginger ale (let it go flat first, since carbonation can worsen stomach discomfort) can help settle things. The compounds in ginger speed up gastric emptying, which means food moves out of your stomach faster and you feel less queasy.
Peppermint works differently. Its active component, menthol, relaxes the smooth muscle in your intestinal wall, which can ease cramping and bloating. Peppermint tea is the simplest way to get this benefit. Enteric-coated peppermint oil capsules, available over the counter, deliver a more concentrated dose to the intestines and have been studied in clinical trials for reducing abdominal pain and cramping. These are more appropriate for ongoing digestive issues than a short bout of stomach flu, but peppermint tea is a safe and helpful option during acute discomfort.
Do Probiotics Help?
Probiotics get a lot of attention for gut health, but the evidence for acute stomach illness is modest. Research on one of the most studied strains, Lactobacillus acidophilus, found it can reduce the duration of diarrhea when taken at high enough doses, though the effect wasn’t always statistically significant when the strain was used alone. Combination probiotic products may work slightly better, but the overall benefit is small.
If you want to try probiotics during recovery, yogurt with live active cultures (once your stomach can handle dairy) or a supplement are reasonable options. They’re unlikely to hurt, but don’t expect them to dramatically shorten your illness. Rehydration and gradual food reintroduction matter more.
Hydration Matters More Than Food
The biggest risk from an upset stomach, especially one involving vomiting or diarrhea, is dehydration. Replacing lost fluids and electrolytes should be your first priority, before worrying about what solid foods to eat. Water is fine, but oral rehydration solutions or diluted fruit juice with a pinch of salt do a better job of replacing the sodium and potassium your body is losing.
Sip slowly rather than gulping. Drinking too much too fast can trigger vomiting again. Small, frequent sips every few minutes are more effective than large amounts at once. If you can’t keep even small sips of water down for more than a few hours, or if you notice dark urine, dizziness, or a dry mouth, dehydration may be setting in quickly.
Signs Something More Serious Is Happening
Most upset stomachs resolve on their own within a few days. But certain symptoms suggest something beyond routine stomach flu or food poisoning. Blood in your stool, persistent vomiting that won’t stop, fever with gut symptoms, unexplained weight loss, or worsening abdominal pain that doesn’t improve after a day or two all warrant medical attention. The same goes for symptoms that linger beyond a few weeks or sudden changes in your bowel habits that don’t return to normal.