When your stomach hurts, the best foods are bland, low-fat, and easy to digest: plain white rice, bananas, toast, broth, applesauce, and boiled potatoes. These sit gently in your stomach without triggering more acid, cramping, or nausea. What you avoid matters just as much as what you eat, and how quickly you return to normal food depends on the type of stomach pain you’re dealing with.
Best Foods for an Upset Stomach
The classic recommendation is the BRAT diet: bananas, rice, applesauce, and toast. These foods are bland, low in fiber, and unlikely to trigger nausea or vomiting. But you don’t need to limit yourself to just those four. Think of BRAT as a starting point, not a complete meal plan.
Bananas replace potassium, a mineral your body loses quickly during diarrhea or vomiting. Both bananas and applesauce contain pectin, a soluble fiber that binds excess water in your gut and helps firm up loose stools. Plain white rice is starch-heavy, and that starch converts into soluble fiber during digestion, which has a similar firming effect. Toast made from white bread gives you simple carbohydrates without irritating your stomach lining.
Beyond BRAT, you can safely eat:
- Potatoes (boiled or baked, no butter)
- Eggs (scrambled or boiled)
- Lean poultry or whitefish (steamed or baked with no added fat)
- Crackers or pasta made from refined white flour
- Hot cereals like Cream of Wheat
- Creamy peanut butter (in small amounts)
- Tofu
The common thread is low fat, minimal seasoning, and soft texture. Fat slows digestion and sits in your stomach longer, which can make pain and nausea worse. Keep portions small. Eating a little every few hours is easier on your stomach than three full meals.
Drinks That Help
Staying hydrated matters more than eating when your stomach hurts, especially if you’re vomiting or have diarrhea. Water is fine for mild symptoms, but if you’ve been losing fluids for hours, you also need sodium and a small amount of sugar. The sugar isn’t just for energy. Glucose and sodium work together to pull water across the intestinal wall, so your body actually absorbs the fluid instead of passing it straight through.
An oral rehydration solution (available at any pharmacy) is the most effective option for moderate fluid loss. You can also sip clear broth, which provides both sodium and water. Diluted apple juice works in a pinch. Take small, frequent sips rather than gulping, since large volumes of liquid can trigger vomiting when your stomach is already irritated.
Avoid coffee, alcohol, and carbonated drinks. Caffeine stimulates acid production, carbonation adds gas pressure to an already unhappy stomach, and alcohol irritates the lining directly.
Ginger and Peppermint for Nausea and Cramping
Ginger has real clinical backing for nausea relief. Its active compounds work on receptors in the gut and brain that control the vomiting reflex. Most clinical studies use around 1,000 mg of ginger per day, which is roughly half a teaspoon of ground ginger or a thumb-sized piece of fresh root. You can steep sliced fresh ginger in hot water for tea, chew on crystallized ginger, or take ginger capsules.
Peppermint works differently. It relaxes the smooth muscle in your intestinal wall by blocking calcium channels that trigger contractions. This makes it especially helpful for cramping, bloating, and that tight, squeezing pain in your abdomen. Peppermint tea is the simplest way to get this benefit. One important caveat: if your stomach pain is from acid reflux, peppermint can make it worse. It relaxes the valve between your esophagus and stomach, letting acid travel upward.
Foods That Will Make It Worse
High-fat foods are the biggest culprits. Fatty cuts of beef, pork, and lamb sit in your stomach longer and increase acid production. Fried foods, full-fat dairy (butter, whole milk, cheese, sour cream), cream sauces, and greasy snacks all fall into this category. Even if you’re hungry, a cheeseburger or bowl of ice cream will almost certainly make things worse.
Other common irritants include:
- Spicy foods, which can inflame an already sensitive stomach lining
- Tomatoes and citrus fruits, which are acidic
- Garlic and onion, which stimulate acid production
- Chocolate, which contains both fat and caffeine
- Processed meats like bacon and ham
If you’re dealing with acid reflux specifically, also avoid mint (despite its benefits for cramping), carbonated beverages, and alcohol. These all relax the valve at the top of your stomach or directly irritate the esophageal lining.
How Quickly to Return to Normal Eating
You don’t need to stay on bland foods for days. Current guidance from the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases is straightforward: once your appetite returns, you can go back to your normal diet, even if you still have some diarrhea. The American Academy of Pediatrics no longer recommends prolonged use of the BRAT diet for children because it’s too nutritionally restrictive. The same logic applies to adults.
The practical approach is to let your body guide you. Start with the bland foods listed above while your symptoms are active. When you feel genuinely hungry (not just eating out of habit), try adding back normal foods one at a time. If something triggers pain or nausea again, back off and wait a few more hours. Most stomach bugs and episodes of food-related distress resolve within one to three days.
What About Probiotics?
Probiotic foods like yogurt, kefir, and fermented vegetables are often recommended for gut recovery, but the clinical evidence is weaker than you might expect. A large Cochrane review looking at probiotics for acute infectious diarrhea found that the data does not clearly support their use, even for the most-studied strains. Two well-conducted recent trials in children found no meaningful benefit.
That said, a small amount of plain, low-fat yogurt is unlikely to hurt and counts as a bland, easy-to-digest food. Just don’t rely on probiotics as a treatment for active stomach symptoms.
Signs Your Stomach Pain Needs Medical Attention
Most stomach pain resolves on its own with rest, hydration, and gentle eating. But certain symptoms signal something more serious. Get emergency care if your stomach pain comes with vomiting blood, black or bloody stool, blood in your urine, a swollen and tender abdomen, chest or shoulder pain, shortness of breath, dizziness, or a high fever. Persistent vomiting that won’t stop also warrants a call, since dehydration can become dangerous quickly, especially in children and older adults.