When your stomach is off, bland, easy-to-digest foods are your best bet. Start with simple carbohydrates like plain rice, toast, crackers, and bananas, then gradually reintroduce more nutritious options as you feel better. What you eat depends partly on your specific symptoms, but the general principle is the same: keep it plain, keep portions small, and avoid anything greasy, spicy, or acidic until things settle down.
Start With the Simplest Foods
The classic BRAT diet (bananas, rice, applesauce, and toast) has been the go-to recommendation for decades, and those four foods are still a solid starting point. They’re low in fiber, easy to break down, and unlikely to irritate an already angry stomach. But you don’t need to limit yourself to just those four. Brothy soups, oatmeal, boiled potatoes, plain crackers, and unsweetened dry cereal are equally gentle and give you more variety.
A day or two of these simple foods is reasonable when you’re dealing with a stomach bug, food poisoning, or traveler’s diarrhea. The goal isn’t long-term nutrition. It’s giving your digestive system a chance to calm down without making it work too hard.
What to Add as You Recover
Once your stomach starts cooperating, begin adding foods that offer more protein and nutrients. Good next-step options include cooked carrots, butternut or pumpkin squash, sweet potatoes without the skin, avocado, skinless chicken or turkey, fish, and eggs. These are still bland and easy to digest, but they give your body the building blocks it needs to bounce back faster.
The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends getting back to a normal diet fairly quickly rather than staying on a restricted one for too long, and the same logic applies to adults. Overly restrictive eating for more than a couple of days can leave you short on calories and key nutrients right when your body needs them most. Let your symptoms guide you: if something goes down fine, you’re ready for it.
Liquids Come First
If you’re vomiting or feel too nauseated to eat solid food, focus on fluids. Water is the obvious choice, but clear broth, diluted apple or white grape juice, sports drinks, plain gelatin, and ice pops (without milk or fruit pieces) all count. Tea and coffee without milk or cream are fine in small amounts, though caffeine can make diarrhea worse, so keep it limited.
Take small sips rather than gulping. Your stomach tolerates a steady trickle far better than a sudden flood. Once you can keep liquids down for several hours without vomiting, try a few bites of something plain like a saltine or a spoonful of rice. If that stays down, gradually increase how much you eat.
Foods and Drinks to Avoid
Some things are almost guaranteed to make an upset stomach worse. The biggest offenders:
- Fatty and fried foods. Fat slows digestion, which keeps food sitting in your stomach longer and can increase nausea and bloating.
- Dairy products. About 70% of adults worldwide don’t produce enough of the enzyme that breaks down lactose. Even if you’re not normally lactose intolerant, a temporary stomach illness can reduce your ability to handle milk, cheese, and ice cream.
- Spicy foods. They can irritate the stomach lining and worsen cramping or diarrhea.
- Caffeine. Coffee, cola, chocolate, and some teas can stimulate your gut and make diarrhea worse.
- Carbonated drinks. The bubbles create gas in your digestive tract, adding bloating and discomfort on top of whatever you’re already dealing with.
- Acidic fruits. Citrus, tomatoes, and similar high-acid foods can sting an irritated stomach.
- Sugar and artificial sweeteners. Sugar can worsen diarrhea, and sugar alcohols like sorbitol and xylitol (found in sugar-free gum and candy) are known to cause loose stools even in healthy people.
- Alcohol. It irritates the stomach lining and promotes dehydration, which is the last thing you need.
Even some healthy foods can cause problems when your stomach is sensitive. Beans, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, and other cruciferous vegetables produce gas during digestion. Apples, pears, and dried fruits are naturally high in fructose, which can trigger bloating and diarrhea when your gut isn’t absorbing well.
Ginger and Peppermint
Ginger is one of the most reliable natural options for nausea. Ginger tea, ginger chews, or even flat ginger ale (let the carbonation go flat first) can take the edge off. Peppermint tea is another popular choice for stomach discomfort, particularly for cramping and bloating.
Peppermint oil capsules are a different story. While they show some benefit for people with irritable bowel syndrome (a 2022 review of 10 studies found they improved overall symptoms and reduced abdominal pain compared to placebo), peppermint oil taken on its own can actually worsen indigestion in some people. If you want peppermint’s soothing effects, stick with the tea rather than concentrated oil supplements.
Do Probiotics Help?
The evidence on probiotics for stomach bugs is genuinely mixed. Some studies in children found that certain probiotic strains shortened diarrhea by roughly a day or reduced the overall duration by about 25 hours. But a larger trial of 646 children with rotavirus found no meaningful difference between probiotics and placebo for stool frequency, diarrhea duration, or vomiting.
If you want to try probiotics, plain yogurt (once you’re past the worst of it and can tolerate dairy) or fermented foods like miso are reasonable options. They’re unlikely to hurt, but don’t count on them as a cure.
Adjusting for Your Specific Symptoms
Not every upset stomach is the same, and what helps depends on what’s going on.
If your main problem is nausea or vomiting, start with clear liquids only. Sip slowly. Avoid strong smells. Once you can keep fluids down, move to the blandest solids: plain toast, crackers, or a few spoonfuls of rice.
If you’re dealing with diarrhea, focus on replacing lost fluids and electrolytes. Sports drinks, broth, and water are your priorities. Stick with binding foods like bananas, white rice, and applesauce. Avoid dairy, caffeine, sugar, and anything high in fat.
If cramping and bloating are the issue, avoid gas-producing foods like beans, cruciferous vegetables, and carbonated beverages. Cooked vegetables are gentler than raw ones. Peppermint tea may help relax the muscles in your digestive tract.
If you’re constipated, the advice flips. You actually want more fiber, not less. Cooked vegetables, whole grains, and plenty of water can help get things moving. Avoid heavily processed foods and packaged snacks, which tend to be low in fiber and high in fat.
Signs Something More Serious Is Going On
Most upset stomachs resolve on their own within a day or two. But certain patterns point to something that needs medical attention. Pain that starts near your belly button and migrates to your lower right side over 12 to 24 hours is a classic sign of appendicitis, especially if it comes with fever, loss of appetite, and worsening pain when you move or cough. Sudden, intense cramping in the lower abdomen that peaks immediately can signal kidney stones. Upper abdominal pain that gets worse after eating, paired with nausea and fever, may indicate pancreatitis.
If you can’t keep any liquids down, haven’t had a bowel movement despite severe pain and bloating, or your symptoms are dramatically worse than any stomach trouble you’ve experienced before, those warrant a trip to the emergency room rather than another day of toast and broth.