The best foods to eat during diarrhea are bland, low-fat, and easy to digest: think bananas, white rice, boiled potatoes, oatmeal, and brothy soups. These foods provide energy without irritating your gut, and some actively help firm up loose stools. But the old advice to limit yourself strictly to bananas, rice, applesauce, and toast (the classic BRAT diet) is outdated. You’ll recover faster by eating a wider range of gentle foods as soon as you can tolerate them.
Why the BRAT Diet Isn’t Enough
For decades, doctors recommended the BRAT diet (bananas, rice, applesauce, toast) as the default plan for diarrhea. It’s not wrong exactly, but it’s too restrictive. The American Academy of Pediatrics no longer recommends a strict BRAT diet for children with diarrhea because it lacks essential nutrients and, if followed for more than 24 hours, can actually slow recovery. The same logic applies to adults.
The four BRAT foods are fine as a starting point, but you should expand beyond them as quickly as your stomach allows. The current advice from most major medical centers is simple: eat as tolerated. If a food goes down without making symptoms worse, keep eating it.
Foods That Help Firm Up Stool
Soluble fiber is your best friend during a bout of diarrhea. It dissolves in water and forms a gel-like material in your digestive tract, which slows digestion and absorbs excess fluid. The result is bulkier, firmer stool. Good sources include oats, bananas, applesauce, peeled apples, carrots, and barley. Green bananas are particularly effective. Research on children with persistent diarrhea found that green banana and pectin (a type of soluble fiber found in fruit) reduced both the amount of stool and the duration of symptoms.
This is different from insoluble fiber, the kind found in raw vegetables, whole wheat, and seeds. Insoluble fiber speeds things through your gut, which is the opposite of what you want right now. Stick with peeled, cooked, or soft fruits and vegetables while symptoms last.
The Full List of Safe Foods
Beyond the classic BRAT options, these foods are well tolerated during diarrhea:
- Starches: boiled potatoes (eaten warm), saltine crackers, dry cereal without added sugar, oatmeal, plain pasta
- Soups: clear brothy soups like chicken broth or vegetable broth
- Proteins: scrambled eggs, skinless chicken or turkey (baked or boiled, not fried), well-cooked fish, smooth nut butters if tolerated
- Fruits: bananas, applesauce, peeled soft fruits
- Vegetables: cooked carrots, cooked peas, other well-cooked soft vegetables
The key preparation rule: no added fat. Bake, boil, or steam rather than frying. Keep seasoning mild. Warm potatoes digest more completely than cold ones, so eat them fresh off the stove rather than as leftovers from the fridge.
Foods and Drinks to Avoid
Several common foods and drinks actively make diarrhea worse. High-fat foods like fried chicken, pizza, and fast food are hard to digest and can increase the urgency and frequency of bowel movements. Skip them until you’re fully recovered.
Caffeine from coffee, tea, and some soft drinks stimulates your intestines and can worsen loose stools. Alcohol has a similar effect. Sugary drinks with high fructose content can pull more water into your intestines, making diarrhea worse. Sugar alcohols, found in sugar-free gum, candies, and some diet drinks, are especially problematic because they’re poorly absorbed and draw fluid into the bowel.
Dairy deserves special attention. When your gut lining is irritated, it temporarily loses some of its ability to digest lactose, the sugar in milk. This means even people who normally handle dairy fine can develop cramping, bloating, and worsened diarrhea from milk, ice cream, or soft cheeses. This temporary lactose intolerance can last a month or more after an acute episode. Yogurt with live cultures is sometimes an exception because the bacteria help break down lactose, but if it bothers you, skip it.
Hydration Matters More Than Food
Dehydration is the biggest immediate risk from diarrhea, especially in children and older adults. You lose water and electrolytes (sodium, potassium, chloride) with every loose stool, and replacing them is more urgent than eating solid food.
The World Health Organization’s oral rehydration formula calls for 8 level teaspoons of sugar and 1 level teaspoon of salt dissolved in 1 liter of water. This specific ratio helps your intestines absorb fluid efficiently. You can buy premade oral rehydration solutions at any pharmacy, which is easier and more precise than mixing your own. Sip small amounts frequently rather than gulping large quantities, which can trigger nausea.
Brothy soups serve double duty here, providing both fluid and sodium. Bananas contribute potassium. Between these and a rehydration solution, you can replace most of what you’re losing.
Probiotics and Recovery
Certain probiotic strains can shorten the duration of acute diarrhea. A large evidence review found that Saccharomyces boulardii (a beneficial yeast) and Bifidobacterium strains significantly reduced how long diarrhea lasted compared to no treatment. A strain called Limosilactobacillus reuteri also showed meaningful benefits. Interestingly, Lactobacillus rhamnosus GG, one of the most commonly marketed probiotic strains, did not significantly shorten diarrhea duration in the same analysis, though it did reduce the overall number of children still experiencing symptoms by the end of treatment.
You can get probiotics through supplements or through fermented foods like yogurt and kefir, though remember the dairy caveat above. If you opt for a supplement, look for one containing S. boulardii or Bifidobacterium species specifically.
How to Reintroduce Normal Foods
Recovery is a gradual process, not a switch you flip. Start with the blandest options (broth, plain rice, bananas, crackers) during the worst of your symptoms. Once you can eat those without your symptoms getting worse, add soft proteins like eggs, skinless poultry, and well-cooked fish. Cooked vegetables come next.
Higher-fat foods, raw vegetables, whole grains, and dairy should be the last things you bring back. There’s no fixed timeline for this. Some people bounce back in a day or two, others need a week of careful eating. The guiding principle is straightforward: if adding a food makes things worse, pull it back out and try again in a day or two. Your gut will tell you what it’s ready for.