When you have diarrhea, you can eat plain, low-fat foods like white rice, bananas, toast, baked chicken without the skin, eggs, oatmeal, and simple broth. The goal is to choose foods that are easy to digest, provide enough nutrition to support recovery, and avoid anything that pulls extra water into your intestines or speeds up digestion.
Foods That Help Firm Up Your Stool
Soluble fiber is your best friend during a bout of diarrhea. It dissolves in water and forms a gel-like material in your stomach, slowing digestion and absorbing excess fluid in your intestines. That’s what helps transform loose, watery stool into something more solid. Good sources of soluble fiber include oats, bananas, applesauce, carrots, and barley.
Beyond soluble fiber, these foods are well tolerated during diarrhea:
- White rice and plain pasta: Low in fiber and gentle on the gut. Brown rice has too much insoluble fiber, so stick with white.
- Bananas: High in potassium, which you lose rapidly during diarrhea, and a good source of soluble fiber.
- Plain toast or crackers: White bread is easier to digest than whole grain during an acute episode.
- Oatmeal: Cooked plain, without added sugar or butter.
- Baked chicken with the skin removed: Lean protein that won’t irritate your digestive tract.
- Plain baked fish: Another lean protein source that’s easy to digest.
- Eggs: Scrambled, boiled, or poached. Skip the butter or oil.
- Smooth nut butters: Peanut, almond, or cashew butter in small amounts provides protein and calories.
- Tofu: A mild, low-fat protein option.
- Applesauce: The pectin in cooked apples acts as a natural stool-firming agent.
Why the BRAT Diet Isn’t Enough
You’ve probably heard of the BRAT diet: bananas, rice, applesauce, and toast. It’s been recommended for decades, but gastroenterologists now consider it too restrictive. Those four foods alone are deficient in protein, fat, and several important vitamins and minerals. Eating only BRAT foods for more than a day or two can actually slow your recovery by depriving your body of the energy it needs to heal.
The current recommendation is to return to a balanced, age-appropriate diet as soon as you can tolerate it. Use BRAT foods as a starting point if your stomach is very unsettled, but add lean proteins and other gentle foods within a day or two. The faster you resume adequate nutrition, the faster your gut lining repairs itself.
What to Drink
Staying hydrated matters more than what you eat. Diarrhea drains water and electrolytes quickly, and dehydration is the main risk, especially in children and older adults. Clear broths like bouillon or consommé replace both fluid and sodium. Colorless sports drinks provide electrolytes without the dyes that can irritate sensitive stomachs. Water, diluted fruit juice, and herbal tea are also fine.
Sip fluids steadily throughout the day rather than drinking large amounts at once, which can trigger another wave of cramping. If you can’t keep fluids down at all, that’s a sign you need medical attention, not just dietary changes.
Foods and Drinks That Make Diarrhea Worse
Some foods actively pull water into your intestines or speed up gut motility, making diarrhea worse. Avoid these until you’ve been symptom-free for at least a day:
- Dairy products: During a diarrheal illness, the lining of your small intestine can temporarily lose its ability to break down lactose, the sugar in milk. Undigested lactose draws water into your intestines and gets fermented by gut bacteria, producing gas, bloating, and more diarrhea. This temporary intolerance can persist for weeks after the illness itself resolves.
- Fried and high-fat foods: Butter, oil, cream sauces, bacon, sausage, and fried anything. Fat is harder to digest under normal conditions, and during diarrhea it can overwhelm your already-stressed gut.
- Sugar alcohols: Sorbitol, mannitol, and xylitol are found in sugar-free gum, candy, and many “diet” products. They cause osmotic diarrhea even in healthy people by pulling water into the intestines.
- High-fructose foods and drinks: Fruit juice, soda, and foods sweetened with high-fructose corn syrup. Fructose in large amounts is poorly absorbed and worsens watery stool.
- Caffeine: Coffee, energy drinks, and strong tea stimulate intestinal contractions.
- Alcohol: Irritates the gut lining and acts as a diuretic, worsening dehydration.
- Raw vegetables and high-fiber foods: Broccoli, cabbage, beans, whole grains, and raw salads. Insoluble fiber speeds transit time through the gut, which is the opposite of what you want.
- Spicy foods: Capsaicin can irritate the intestinal lining and trigger cramping.
How Probiotics Can Help
Probiotics, the beneficial bacteria found in supplements and fermented foods, can shorten the duration of infectious diarrhea by roughly 30 hours on average. A large Cochrane review found that people taking probiotics were about 34% less likely to still have diarrhea at the three-day mark compared to those who didn’t. Lactobacillus strains showed the most consistent benefit, with some combinations cutting diarrhea duration by as much as two full days.
If you want to try probiotics, look for supplements containing Lactobacillus species. Yogurt is a natural source, but since dairy can be problematic during diarrhea, a supplement or a dairy-free fermented food like kimchi or sauerkraut may be a better choice while symptoms are active.
Getting Back to Normal Eating
Most acute diarrhea resolves within one to three days. As your stools start to firm up, gradually reintroduce foods in this general order: start with the bland, low-fat foods listed above, then add cooked vegetables, then lean meats and fish in slightly larger portions, and finally reintroduce dairy, raw fruits and vegetables, and higher-fat foods. There’s no strict timeline. Let your gut guide you. If a food triggers cramping or loose stool again, back off and try again in another day.
Dairy deserves special patience. Because the enzyme that digests lactose is produced at the very tips of your intestinal lining, it’s often the last thing to fully recover. You might tolerate small amounts of cheese or yogurt (which have less lactose than milk) before you can handle a full glass of milk again.
If diarrhea lasts more than 24 hours, if you notice blood or black color in your stool, if you develop a fever above 102°F, or if you become so drowsy or confused that something feels off, those are signs that something beyond diet needs attention.