When your stomach is upset, the best foods are bland, soft, and easy to digest: think plain rice, toast, bananas, scrambled eggs, and broth. The goal is to give your digestive system something gentle to work with while avoiding anything that could make nausea, cramping, or diarrhea worse. What you eat in the first day or two matters, but so does how quickly you return to a normal, nutritious diet.
Start With Liquids if You’re Vomiting
If you’re actively throwing up, skip solid food entirely and focus on staying hydrated. Small, frequent sips of water, clear broth, or an oral rehydration solution work best. Ice chips are useful if even sips feel like too much. Sports drinks can help replace lost electrolytes, though they contain more sugar than ideal.
Once you’ve kept liquids down for a few hours without vomiting, you can start introducing simple solids. There’s no need to wait a full day. Just let your body guide you.
The BRAT Diet: Helpful but Limited
You’ve probably heard of the BRAT diet: bananas, rice, applesauce, and toast. These foods are easy on the stomach because they’re low in fiber, low in fat, and unlikely to trigger nausea. Bananas in particular have a relatively mild pH (around 4.5 to 5.2), and their soft texture requires almost no digestive effort.
That said, the BRAT diet is no longer considered the gold standard. It lacks protein, calcium, vitamin B12, and enough fiber to support recovery. For adults, sticking to just these four foods is fine for a day or so at your sickest, but you shouldn’t follow it longer than that. For children, the American Academy of Pediatrics considers the BRAT diet too restrictive and says following it for more than 24 hours may actually slow recovery.
The current recommendation is simpler: eat as tolerated. Once your stomach starts to settle, begin adding foods that are still soft and bland but more nutritious.
Best Foods as Your Stomach Improves
As soon as you can handle more than plain toast and rice, work in these options:
- Scrambled eggs provide protein without being heavy or greasy, as long as you cook them without butter or oil.
- Skinless chicken or turkey (baked or boiled) adds lean protein to help your body recover.
- Cooked vegetables like carrots, potatoes, or squash are easier to digest than raw ones and provide vitamins the BRAT diet lacks.
- Oatmeal offers soluble fiber that’s gentle on the gut and more filling than white rice.
- Plain crackers or pretzels can help absorb excess stomach acid and are easy to eat in small amounts.
You don’t need to wait until you feel 100% before eating real food. The sooner you return to a balanced diet, the faster your gut recovers. Just add things gradually and pay attention to how your body responds.
How Peppermint and Ginger Can Help
Peppermint tea is one of the most effective natural options for stomach cramping and bloating. Peppermint oil works by relaxing the smooth muscle in your digestive tract, blocking the calcium signals that cause those muscles to contract and spasm. This is why it can ease the tight, crampy feeling that comes with an upset stomach. Sipping peppermint tea or sucking on a peppermint lozenge can provide noticeable relief, especially for bloating.
Ginger is better known for nausea. Fresh ginger tea (made by steeping sliced ginger root in hot water) or even ginger chews can help settle queasiness. If your main symptom is nausea rather than cramping, ginger is the better choice.
What Probiotics Can Do
If your upset stomach involves diarrhea, probiotics may shorten how long it lasts. Studies on specific probiotic strains have found meaningful benefits: one strain of Lactobacillus reduced diarrhea duration by about 25 hours in children, while another cut it by roughly two days compared to placebo. The evidence isn’t universal, though. At least one large trial of over 600 children found no significant difference between a probiotic group and a control group.
Yogurt with live active cultures is the simplest way to get probiotics from food, as long as dairy doesn’t worsen your symptoms. Kefir, miso soup, and fermented foods like sauerkraut are other options. If you choose a supplement, look for one containing Lactobacillus or Saccharomyces strains, which have the most clinical evidence behind them.
Foods That Will Make It Worse
Some foods actively worsen an upset stomach, and fatty foods are the biggest offenders. Fat slows down gastric emptying, meaning food sits in your stomach longer. It also triggers the release of a hormone called CCK, which increases feelings of fullness, bloating, and nausea in people with digestive distress. Lab studies have shown that adding fat to a meal significantly worsens these symptoms. Greasy, fried, or heavy foods are the worst culprits because they’re high in long-chain fats, which provoke a stronger hormonal response than lighter fats like those in coconut oil.
Beyond fat, avoid these until your stomach has fully recovered:
- Spicy foods like chili and hot sauce can directly irritate an already inflamed stomach lining.
- Dairy (other than yogurt) can be hard to digest, especially if diarrhea has temporarily reduced your ability to break down lactose.
- Caffeine and alcohol both stimulate acid production and can worsen nausea and cramping.
- Carbonated drinks introduce gas into an already uncomfortable digestive system.
- Raw vegetables and high-fiber foods require more digestive work than your stomach can comfortably handle right now.
Signs You Need More Than a Diet Change
Most upset stomachs resolve within a day or two with rest, fluids, and gentle eating. But certain symptoms signal something more serious. Contact a doctor if you’ve had diarrhea for 24 hours or more, can’t keep any fluids down, notice blood or black color in your stool, or have a fever of 102°F or higher.
Watch for signs of dehydration, which can develop quickly when you’re losing fluids through vomiting or diarrhea. In adults, the warning signs include extreme thirst, dark-colored urine, dizziness, confusion, and skin that stays “tented” when you pinch it rather than flattening back right away. In infants and young children, look for no wet diapers for three hours, no tears when crying, a sunken soft spot on the head, and unusual crankiness or lethargy.