The best foods to eat when you’re sick depend on your symptoms, but a few stand out across nearly every type of illness: broth-based soups, honey, ginger, bananas, and foods rich in zinc and probiotics. Each targets a different part of feeling miserable, from soothing a raw throat to calming a churning stomach to actually shortening how long you’re sick. Here’s what works and why.
Chicken Soup Does More Than Comfort You
Chicken soup has real physiological effects beyond just being warm and familiar. Lab research has shown that chicken soup significantly inhibits the movement of neutrophils, a type of white blood cell responsible for the inflammation that causes congestion, body aches, and that general “sick” feeling. This effect is concentration-dependent, meaning a richer, more flavorful soup does more. The active compounds are dissolved in the broth itself, not locked in the chunks of meat or vegetables.
Hot chicken soup also increases nasal mucus velocity, which is a clinical way of saying it helps clear out your sinuses. This appears to work through two pathways: the aroma you inhale through your nose and a separate mechanism related to taste. So sipping it slowly and breathing in the steam matters. The protein from the chicken also helps meet the increased caloric demands your body faces during a fever. Your metabolic rate rises roughly 8 to 10 percent for every degree of temperature elevation, so even if your appetite is low, calorie-dense broth helps your body keep up.
Honey for Coughs, Especially at Night
Honey is one of the most effective natural remedies for cough. A systematic review in BMJ Evidence-Based Medicine found that honey reduced both cough frequency and cough severity compared to usual care. When compared head-to-head with dextromethorphan (the active ingredient in most over-the-counter cough syrups), honey performed about equally well, with no significant difference between them for cough frequency, severity, or overall symptom scores.
Honey actually outperformed diphenhydramine (the antihistamine in products like Benadryl) across all three measures. Most of the strongest evidence comes from studies in children, where nighttime cough is especially disruptive. A spoonful of honey before bed, stirred into warm tea or taken straight, coats the throat and provides real relief. One important note: honey should never be given to children under one year old due to the risk of botulism.
Zinc Can Shorten a Cold by Days
If you catch your cold early, zinc lozenges can meaningfully cut the duration. In one well-known trial, zinc gluconate lozenges shortened colds by an average of four days. Zinc acetate lozenges showed an average reduction of about 2.7 days. The effect scales with how long the cold would have lasted on its own: people whose colds would have dragged on for 15 to 17 days saw them shortened by roughly eight days, while very short colds of two days were only shortened by about one day.
The key is starting within the first 24 hours of symptoms. Zinc-rich foods like shellfish, red meat, pumpkin seeds, and chickpeas support your immune system during illness, but the concentrated doses in lozenges are what produced these results in clinical trials. If you prefer food sources, oysters contain more zinc per serving than any other food.
What to Eat With an Upset Stomach
The classic BRAT diet (bananas, rice, applesauce, toast) is fine for the first day or two of stomach flu, food poisoning, or traveler’s diarrhea. But current guidance from Harvard Health suggests there’s no reason to limit yourself to just those four foods. A broader range of bland, easy-to-digest options works just as well and provides more of the nutrients your body needs to recover.
Good choices include brothy soups, oatmeal, boiled potatoes, crackers, and unsweetened dry cereals. Once your stomach starts to settle, you can add cooked squash (butternut or pumpkin), cooked carrots, sweet potatoes without the skin, avocado, skinless chicken or turkey, fish, and eggs. These are all gentle on the digestive system while delivering protein and micronutrients that a strict BRAT diet lacks. The goal is to eat what you can tolerate while gradually reintroducing more nutritious foods.
Ginger for Nausea
Ginger has genuine anti-nausea properties. A large clinical trial of 644 patients found that ginger supplementation at doses of 0.5 to 1.0 grams per day significantly reduced nausea. That’s roughly a quarter-inch to half-inch piece of fresh ginger root, which you can steep in hot water for tea, grate into broth, or chew in crystallized form. Higher doses (1.5 grams) didn’t provide additional benefit in that trial, so more isn’t necessarily better. Ginger ale can help too, though many commercial brands contain very little actual ginger. Check the label or make your own by steeping fresh ginger in hot water and adding a bit of sweetener.
Warm Liquids vs. Cold Foods for a Sore Throat
Both warm and cold options help a sore throat, but through different mechanisms. Warm liquids like tea and broth help loosen mucus and soothe the back of the throat, which can also reduce coughing. Cold liquids and frozen foods like popsicles, ice chips, and sorbet help with pain and inflammation by numbing the area, similar to icing a swollen joint.
Cleveland Clinic physicians recommend trying both to see what works best for you. If swallowing feels painful, cold options may be more tolerable than hot soup. If you’re congested and your throat feels thick with mucus, warm liquids will do more good. Either way, staying hydrated is one of the most important things you can do when sick, especially with a fever, since your body is burning through fluids faster than normal.
Probiotic Foods for Faster Recovery
Yogurt, kefir, sauerkraut, kimchi, and other fermented foods contain Lactobacillus and Bifidobacterium strains that can influence how quickly you recover from respiratory infections. A meta-analysis in the British Journal of Nutrition found that people taking these probiotic strains experienced illness episodes that were nearly a full day shorter than those taking a placebo. They also had fewer total sick days and missed less work or school.
Probiotics work best as a regular part of your diet rather than something you start only after getting sick, since they need time to establish themselves in your gut. But even during illness, yogurt is a smart choice: it’s easy to swallow with a sore throat, provides protein and calories, and the cold temperature can soothe inflammation. Choose varieties with live active cultures listed on the label.
Foods to Avoid When Sick
Some foods can make symptoms worse. Dairy doesn’t actually increase mucus production (that’s a persistent myth), but its thick texture can feel unpleasant when you’re already congested. Sugary foods and drinks suppress immune function temporarily and don’t provide useful nutrition. Alcohol dehydrates you and interferes with sleep quality, both of which slow recovery. Spicy foods can irritate an already inflamed throat or upset stomach, though if you’re just congested, the capsaicin in hot peppers can temporarily open your sinuses.
Fried, greasy, or heavily processed foods are harder to digest and can worsen nausea. Coffee in moderate amounts is fine if you’re used to it (withdrawal headaches on top of being sick aren’t fun), but it’s mildly dehydrating, so match each cup with extra water.