When you have the stomach flu, the best things to eat are bland, low-fiber foods that are easy to digest: plain rice, toast, bananas, broth-based soups, boiled potatoes, crackers, and oatmeal. But what matters most in the first hours isn’t food at all. It’s fluids. Replacing the water and salt you’re losing through vomiting and diarrhea is the single most important thing you can do to recover faster and feel better sooner.
Start With Fluids, Not Food
Most people with stomach flu (viral gastroenteritis) can’t keep food down during the first several hours. That’s fine. Your body can go a day or two without solid food, but losing fluids and electrolytes quickly becomes a problem. Dehydration causes the worst symptoms people associate with stomach flu: dizziness, headaches, extreme fatigue, and muscle cramps.
Take small, frequent sips rather than gulping down a full glass. Water is a good start, but it doesn’t replace the sodium and potassium you’re losing. Oral rehydration solutions (sold as Pedialyte or store-brand equivalents) are specifically designed for this. They contain about three times more sodium than sports drinks, along with a lower sugar concentration, which makes them more effective at replacing what diarrhea pulls out of your body. Sports drinks like Gatorade work in a pinch, but their higher sugar content can actually pull more water into the intestines and make diarrhea worse for some people. Diluting a sports drink with equal parts water helps.
Clear broth, especially chicken or vegetable broth with salt, is another excellent option. It provides sodium, a small amount of calories, and warmth that can feel soothing on a raw stomach. Herbal teas and coconut water also work. Avoid anything carbonated, caffeinated, or high in sugar during the worst of it.
The BRAT Diet and Beyond
You’ve probably heard of the BRAT diet: bananas, rice, applesauce, and toast. It’s been standard advice for decades, and it’s not wrong. These foods are gentle on an inflamed stomach. But there’s no clinical research showing the BRAT diet works better than simply eating any bland, easy-to-digest food. Harvard Health notes that restricting yourself to only those four foods for more than a day or two doesn’t make much sense, since they lack the protein and nutrients your body needs to recover.
A better approach is to think of BRAT foods as a starting point, then expand to other gentle options as soon as you can tolerate them:
- Starches: plain white rice, boiled potatoes (no butter or skin), saltine crackers, unsweetened dry cereal, oatmeal
- Proteins: skinless chicken or turkey (baked or boiled), plain scrambled eggs, mild white fish
- Cooked vegetables: carrots, butternut squash, pumpkin, sweet potatoes without skin
- Fruits: bananas, applesauce (unsweetened), avocado
The common thread is that these foods are low in fat, low in fiber, and not heavily spiced. Fat slows digestion and can trigger nausea. Fiber, while normally healthy, adds bulk and stimulates the gut in ways that make diarrhea worse. Spices irritate an already inflamed digestive lining.
When to Start Eating Again
There’s no need to wait until you feel completely normal. Once you’ve gone a few hours without vomiting, try a small amount of something bland. A few bites of plain toast or a quarter cup of rice is enough to test the waters. If that stays down for 30 to 60 minutes, eat a little more.
Most people can start reintroducing gentle solid foods within 12 to 24 hours of symptom onset. Eating small meals every two to three hours works better than three large ones, because your stomach is processing food more slowly than usual. If you eat too much at once and vomit, go back to sipping fluids for another hour or two before trying again. Recovery isn’t always linear.
Foods That Make Diarrhea Worse
Certain foods actively pull water into your intestines, which is the last thing you want when you already have diarrhea. The biggest culprits are sugars your gut struggles to absorb.
Fructose is one of the main offenders. It’s naturally present in fruit juices, apples, pears, cherries, and peaches, and it’s added to sodas and many processed foods. Ingesting more than 40 to 80 grams of fructose in a day can trigger diarrhea even in healthy people. When your gut is already inflamed, it takes far less. This is why apple juice, often given to sick kids, can backfire.
Artificial sweeteners like sorbitol, mannitol, and xylitol (found in sugar-free gum, candy, and some medications) have the same effect. They’re poorly absorbed and draw water into the bowel. Check the labels on any lozenges or chewable medications you’re taking.
Dairy is another common problem. The stomach flu temporarily reduces your gut’s ability to break down lactose, the sugar in milk. Even people who normally tolerate dairy well can develop temporary lactose intolerance during and after a bout of gastroenteritis. Avoid milk, ice cream, soft cheeses, and creamy soups until you’ve been feeling better for a couple of days. Yogurt is sometimes tolerated because the bacterial cultures have already partially broken down the lactose, but it’s still worth being cautious.
Greasy, fried, and heavily seasoned foods should wait, too. The same goes for alcohol and coffee, both of which irritate the stomach lining and increase fluid loss.
Ginger for Nausea
Ginger is one of the few home remedies with real clinical support for reducing nausea. It’s been studied in dosages ranging from 250 milligrams to 1 gram taken three to four times daily, with no added benefit from going above 1 gram per day. You don’t need to measure precisely. A thumb-sized piece of fresh ginger steeped in hot water for 5 to 10 minutes makes an effective tea. Ginger chews, ginger candies, and flat ginger ale (stir out the carbonation first) are other options, though many commercial ginger ales contain very little actual ginger.
Even smelling ginger may help. In clinical trials for chemotherapy-related nausea, inhaling ginger essential oil vapors for two minutes at a time, several times a day, reduced symptoms. If you can’t keep anything down, holding a cloth with a drop of ginger oil near your nose is worth trying.
Skip the Probiotics
Probiotic supplements are widely marketed for gut health, and it seems intuitive that they’d help with stomach flu. But the evidence doesn’t support it. Two well-designed trials reviewed by the American Gastroenterological Association found that common probiotic strains had no benefit for acute gastroenteritis. There was no difference between probiotic and placebo groups in duration of diarrhea, duration of vomiting, or number of days missed from school or work. Given the cost of these supplements, they’re not worth adding to your recovery plan.
What a Recovery Timeline Looks Like
Most cases of stomach flu last one to three days. The vomiting typically stops first, usually within 24 hours. Diarrhea can linger for two to five days, and your appetite may feel off for up to a week. During this trailing period, continue favoring bland foods and staying well hydrated.
As you start feeling better, reintroduce foods gradually over two to three days. Cooked vegetables before raw ones. Lean proteins before fatty meats. Simple grains before whole grains. Your gut lining needs time to regenerate, and rushing back to a normal diet can trigger a relapse of symptoms. Dairy should be one of the last things you bring back, since the enzyme that digests lactose is produced by cells at the very tips of your intestinal lining, which are the first to be damaged and the last to recover.