Bland, easy-to-digest foods are your best bet when your stomach hurts. The right choices depend on what’s causing the pain, whether it’s nausea, diarrhea, cramping, or general upset, but a few categories of food consistently help across most types of stomach trouble. Here’s what to reach for and why it works.
Plain Starches: The Safest Starting Point
White rice, plain toast made from refined flour, saltine crackers, and simple pasta are among the gentlest foods for an irritated stomach. White rice in particular is a go-to because the milling process strips away the bran and germ, leaving only the starchy endosperm. That makes it extremely low in fiber and fast for your body to break down, which means less work for a digestive system that’s already struggling.
The old advice was to stick strictly to the BRAT diet: bananas, rice, applesauce, and toast. That’s still a reasonable framework for the first day or two of stomach flu, food poisoning, or traveler’s diarrhea. But as Harvard Health notes, there’s no need to limit yourself to only those four foods. Once your stomach starts to settle, you can expand to other bland, nutritious options like cooked sweet potatoes without skin, skinless chicken or turkey, fish, eggs, and cooked squash. These foods are still easy to digest but give your body the protein and nutrients it needs to actually recover.
Applesauce and Bananas for Diarrhea
If your stomach pain comes with diarrhea, applesauce and bananas deserve special attention. Applesauce is rich in pectin, a type of soluble fiber that absorbs water in the gut and helps firm up loose stools. In a controlled trial of children with acute diarrhea, those given pectin-containing diets saw dramatically better outcomes than those eating rice alone. By the third day, 55 to 59 percent of children on pectin or banana diets had stopped having diarrhea, compared with just 15 percent in the rice-only group. They also needed less rehydration fluid and vomited less frequently.
Bananas pull double duty. They’re soft, low in fiber, and a rich source of potassium, an electrolyte you lose quickly through diarrhea and vomiting. Replacing potassium helps your muscles, heart, and digestive system function normally during recovery.
Ginger for Nausea
Ginger is one of the most studied natural remedies for nausea. Its active compounds, called gingerols, work by blocking serotonin receptors in the gut that trigger the vomiting reflex. Specifically, they reduce the amount of serotonin your body produces while speeding up its breakdown, which dials down the chemical signal that makes you feel like you need to throw up.
Fresh ginger tea, ginger chews, or even flat ginger ale (look for brands made with real ginger) can help settle nausea from stomach flu, motion sickness, or general upset. Grating a thumb-sized piece of fresh ginger into hot water and steeping it for five to ten minutes is a simple way to make ginger tea at home. If you’re dealing with persistent nausea, ginger supplements in capsule form are also widely available.
Bone Broth for Recovery
When solid food feels like too much, bone broth is an excellent middle ground. It’s warm, hydrating, and rich in amino acids like glutamine and glycine that support cellular repair and help maintain the integrity of your gut lining. Research published in the European Medical Journal found that bone broth strengthens the gut barrier and reduces intestinal inflammation, which is especially useful if your stomach pain involves irritation or inflammation of the digestive tract.
Bone broth also provides fluid and a small amount of sodium, both of which matter when you’ve been vomiting or unable to eat. Sip it slowly rather than drinking a full bowl at once, and stick with plain versions without heavy seasoning or added fat.
Fermented Foods for Ongoing Gut Health
Once you’re past the acute phase of stomach pain and can tolerate more variety, fermented foods like plain yogurt and kefir can help restore balance to your gut bacteria. Kefir contains a diverse mix of live cultures, often including strains like Lactobacillus rhamnosus, Lactobacillus acidophilus, and Bifidobacterium longum, with a typical serving delivering 25 to 30 billion colony-forming units. That’s a much broader and more concentrated dose of beneficial bacteria than most commercial yogurts provide.
The key word here is “once you’re feeling better.” During active vomiting or severe cramping, the acidity and fat content of fermented dairy can make things worse. Start with small amounts and see how your stomach responds. If you’re lactose intolerant, kefir is often better tolerated than milk because the fermentation process breaks down much of the lactose.
Foods to Avoid While Your Stomach Hurts
What you leave off your plate matters as much as what you put on it. High-fiber foods like raw vegetables, whole grains, beans, and nuts require significant digestive effort and can worsen cramping and bloating. The Mayo Clinic recommends keeping fiber intake to no more than 1 to 2 grams per serving when your gut is irritated.
Fatty and fried foods slow gastric emptying, meaning they sit in your stomach longer and can intensify nausea. Spicy foods, caffeine, and alcohol all irritate the stomach lining directly. Dairy (other than small amounts of yogurt) can be problematic because many people temporarily lose some ability to digest lactose during a stomach illness, even if they normally tolerate it fine.
Peppermint tea is a common home remedy, but it comes with a caveat. While peppermint oil can help with cramping and IBS symptoms, it relaxes the valve between your stomach and esophagus. If your stomach pain involves any acid reflux or heartburn, peppermint can actually make the burning worse. The NIH notes that peppermint oil taken on its own may worsen indigestion in some people. Enteric-coated peppermint capsules are designed to bypass the stomach and reduce this risk, but plain peppermint tea doesn’t offer that protection.
How to Reintroduce Food After Stomach Pain
The biggest mistake people make is eating too much too soon. Start with small sips of clear fluids: water, broth, or an oral rehydration solution. Once you can keep liquids down for a few hours, move to a few bites of plain white rice, toast, or a couple of spoonfuls of applesauce. Eat slowly and in small portions, even if you feel hungry.
Over the next 24 to 48 hours, gradually add in soft proteins like scrambled eggs, baked chicken without skin, or steamed fish. Cooked carrots, canned potatoes, and butternut squash are good vegetable options because they’re low in fiber and gentle on the gut. If a food makes your symptoms return, back off and try again later. Most episodes of stomach pain from viral illness or food poisoning resolve within one to three days, and your appetite will naturally guide you back to normal eating as your gut heals.