When your stomach is upset, the best foods are bland, low-fiber, and easy to digest: think bananas, plain rice, toast, broth, and applesauce. These foods are gentle enough to stay down while still giving your body some fuel. But you don’t need to limit yourself to just those basics. Several other foods and drinks can actively help calm nausea, ease cramping, and speed recovery.
Start With Fluids, Not Food
The biggest risk from an upset stomach, especially one involving vomiting or diarrhea, isn’t the missed meal. It’s dehydration. Before you worry about what to eat, focus on what to drink. Small, frequent sips of water, clear broth, or diluted juice work better than gulping large amounts at once, which can trigger more nausea.
If you’ve been vomiting or having diarrhea for several hours, plain water alone isn’t ideal. Your body loses sodium and potassium along with fluid. A basic oral rehydration approach pairs a small amount of salt with sugar or glucose in roughly equal proportions, because your gut absorbs water most efficiently when sodium and glucose arrive together. You can buy oral rehydration packets at any pharmacy, or sip alternating rounds of broth (for sodium) and diluted fruit juice (for sugar and potassium).
Signs you’re getting dehydrated include dark-colored urine, urinating less than usual, dizziness, extreme thirst, and skin that doesn’t bounce back quickly when you pinch it.
The Best Foods for a Queasy Stomach
The classic advice is the BRAT diet: bananas, rice, applesauce, and toast. These foods are low in fat, low in fiber, and unlikely to irritate your stomach lining. Bananas are especially useful because they replace potassium, a mineral your body loses rapidly during diarrhea. According to Harvard Health, it’s reasonable to follow the BRAT approach for a day or two during a stomach bug, food poisoning, or traveler’s diarrhea.
But BRAT foods alone are nutritionally thin. They lack protein, healthy fats, and many vitamins. Once you can keep the basics down, start expanding to other gentle options:
- Cooked vegetables: butternut squash, pumpkin, carrots, and sweet potatoes (peeled) are all easy to digest while providing more nutrients than plain toast.
- Lean protein: skinless chicken, turkey, fish, and eggs give your body what it needs to repair tissue and recover.
- Soft fruits: avocado adds calories and healthy fat without irritating your gut.
- Plain crackers or pretzels: salty and starchy, these help settle nausea and replace some sodium.
- Oatmeal: cooked with water rather than milk, it’s bland and filling without being heavy.
The common thread is “bland and soft.” If a food is greasy, spicy, heavily seasoned, fried, or high in fiber, save it for when you’re feeling better.
Why Ginger Actually Works
Ginger isn’t just folk wisdom. The active compounds in ginger root block serotonin receptors in your gut, the same receptors that trigger the nausea signal to your brain. Ginger also helps your stomach empty more normally, which reduces that heavy, queasy feeling when food seems to sit like a rock.
You can get ginger through ginger tea (steep sliced fresh ginger in hot water for 5 to 10 minutes), ginger chews, or ginger ale that contains real ginger rather than just flavoring. Research suggests that even modest daily amounts, around 1 gram, can meaningfully reduce nausea when taken consistently over a few days. That’s roughly a half-teaspoon of freshly grated ginger or a standard ginger supplement capsule.
Peppermint for Stomach Cramps
If your upset stomach comes with cramping or spasms, peppermint can help. Peppermint oil relaxes the smooth muscle lining your digestive tract by blocking the calcium signals that cause those muscles to contract. The result is less cramping and less of that tight, painful pressure in your abdomen.
Peppermint tea is the simplest way to get this benefit. Sip it warm between meals rather than with food. One note: if your upset stomach is caused by acid reflux, peppermint can make things worse by relaxing the valve between your stomach and esophagus, letting acid travel upward. Stick with ginger if heartburn is part of the picture.
Foods and Drinks to Avoid
What you don’t eat matters as much as what you do. Several common choices can make an upset stomach worse:
- Dairy products: milk, cheese, and ice cream are hard to digest when your gut is inflamed. Lactose can worsen diarrhea and bloating.
- Fatty or fried foods: these slow digestion and can increase nausea.
- Caffeine: coffee and energy drinks stimulate stomach acid production and can worsen cramping.
- Alcohol: irritates the stomach lining and promotes dehydration.
- Raw vegetables and high-fiber foods: whole grains, beans, and raw salads require more digestive effort than your stomach can handle right now.
- Sugary drinks: full-strength sodas and fruit juices can pull water into the gut and make diarrhea worse. If you drink juice, dilute it by half with water.
Probiotics for Faster Recovery
If your upset stomach involves diarrhea, probiotics can shorten the episode. Studies show that taking probiotics alongside proper hydration reduces diarrhea duration by about 25 hours on average and cuts the risk of symptoms lasting beyond four days by nearly 60%. Interestingly, the specific strain doesn’t seem to matter much. Whether it’s a yogurt-based product, a supplement capsule, or a different formulation, the benefit is similar across preparations and dosages.
Yogurt (plain, with live active cultures) is the easiest food-based source, though if dairy bothers your stomach right now, a supplement capsule may be easier to tolerate. Fermented foods like miso and kefir are other options once you’re able to keep food down.
How to Ease Back Into Normal Eating
Most stomach bugs and bouts of food poisoning resolve within one to three days. During that window, think of your eating in phases. In the first several hours, stick to clear fluids only. Once you can keep liquids down for a few hours without vomiting, try small amounts of the blandest foods: a few bites of toast, a quarter of a banana, a spoonful of rice. Eat slowly and stop if nausea returns.
As symptoms fade, gradually add more variety and nutrition. Cooked vegetables, lean proteins, and soft fruits can come back within a day or two. Reintroduce dairy, raw vegetables, spicy foods, and fatty meals last. Rushing back to normal eating is the most common reason people feel worse again after an initial improvement. Your gut lining needs time to heal, and gentle foods give it that space.
If you’ve had diarrhea or vomiting for more than 24 hours, can’t keep any fluids down, notice blood in your stool, or develop a fever above 102°F, those are signs that something more than a routine stomach bug may be going on and that medical attention is warranted.