When your stomach is upset, the best foods are bland, low-fiber, and easy to digest: think white rice, plain toast, bananas, boiled potatoes, and broth-based soups. The goal is to give your digestive system as little work as possible while still getting calories and nutrients to help you recover. What you avoid matters just as much as what you eat, and timing plays a bigger role than most people realize.
Start With Liquids, Then Ease Into Food
If you’ve been vomiting, don’t rush to eat. Give your stomach a few hours of rest first. Start by sucking on ice chips or taking small sips of water every 15 minutes. Once you’ve kept liquids down for a few hours, your appetite will likely start coming back on its own, and that’s your signal to try solid food.
Dehydration is the biggest immediate risk with vomiting or diarrhea, so replacing fluids and electrolytes comes before food. You can make a simple rehydration drink at home: mix 4 cups of water with half a teaspoon of table salt and 2 tablespoons of sugar. This ratio helps your intestines absorb water more efficiently than plain water alone. Diluted sports drinks work too, though adding a pinch of salt improves them. Clear broths, herbal teas, and diluted fruit juices are also good options in the early hours.
The Best Foods for an Upset Stomach
You’ve probably heard of the BRAT diet: bananas, rice, applesauce, and toast. It’s a fine starting point, but there’s no reason to limit yourself to just those four foods. Plenty of other bland options are equally gentle on your stomach and provide more nutritional variety to help you recover faster.
Good choices include:
- Starches: white rice, plain pasta or noodles, boiled or baked potatoes (peeled), saltine crackers, pretzels, white bread, flour tortillas, oatmeal, and refined cereals like cream of wheat
- Fruits: bananas, applesauce, canned peaches or pears
- Proteins: skinless baked or broiled chicken or turkey, poached fish, eggs, creamy peanut butter
- Soups: clear broth-based soups, chicken noodle soup
Notice the pattern: these are all low in fiber, low in fat, and mildly flavored. Fiber normally helps digestion, but when your gut is inflamed or irritated, it creates extra work. Refined grains and peeled vegetables are easier to break down than their whole-grain or raw counterparts.
When to Add More Nutritious Foods
Once your stomach has settled and you’re tolerating bland foods without nausea or cramping, start expanding your diet. Cooked squash (butternut or pumpkin), cooked carrots, sweet potatoes without skin, and avocado are all gentle enough for a recovering stomach while offering more vitamins and minerals than plain crackers. Adding lean proteins like chicken, fish, or eggs at this stage gives your body the building blocks it needs to repair and bounce back.
Most people can return to their normal diet within a day or two of symptoms improving. There’s no need to stay on bland foods longer than necessary.
Foods and Drinks to Avoid
Some foods actively make an upset stomach worse. Fatty and greasy foods slow down the rate at which your stomach empties, keeping food sitting there longer and increasing the chance of nausea. Fried foods, rich sauces, and heavy dairy products like cheese and ice cream all fall into this category.
Spicy foods are another common trigger. Capsaicin, the compound that makes peppers hot, binds to pain receptors and tricks your brain into thinking your body is being burned. Your stomach responds by producing more mucus, and in larger doses, capsaicin can cause nausea, cramping, and diarrhea, exactly what you’re trying to avoid.
Other things to skip while your stomach is recovering:
- Caffeine: stimulates stomach acid production and can worsen nausea
- Alcohol: irritates the stomach lining and promotes dehydration
- Carbonated drinks: can cause bloating and gas in a sensitive stomach
- Raw vegetables and high-fiber foods: harder to digest when your gut is inflamed
- Citrus fruits and juices: their acidity can aggravate an already irritated stomach
Ginger and Peppermint for Nausea and Cramping
Ginger is one of the most well-studied natural remedies for nausea. Its active compound works directly on the digestive tract and has been shown to reduce nausea in a range of settings, from morning sickness to post-surgical recovery. Most clinical research has used 250 mg to 1 gram of powdered ginger root daily, typically split into several doses. The easiest way to get it is through ginger tea, ginger chews, or ginger ale made with real ginger (many commercial brands use artificial flavoring, so check the label).
Peppermint can help if your stomach upset involves cramping or spasms. Menthol, the main active component in peppermint, relaxes the smooth muscle lining of the digestive tract by blocking calcium movement in the muscle cells. This spasmolytic effect is real but short-lived, lasting roughly 20 minutes per dose. Peppermint tea is the most accessible form. If you’re dealing with acid reflux alongside your stomach issues, though, peppermint can make that worse by relaxing the valve between your esophagus and stomach.
Probiotics May Shorten Recovery
If your upset stomach is caused by an infection (stomach flu, food poisoning, traveler’s diarrhea), probiotics may help you recover faster. A large Cochrane review found that probiotics reduced the average duration of diarrhea by about 30 hours compared to no treatment. They also lowered the risk of diarrhea persisting beyond three days by roughly a third.
Not all probiotic strains are equally effective. The strains with the strongest evidence include Lactobacillus rhamnosus GG, Lactobacillus reuteri, and Saccharomyces boulardii (a beneficial yeast). You can find these in supplement form at most pharmacies. Yogurt contains some probiotic strains, but during acute stomach upset, dairy can be hard to tolerate, so supplements are generally the better route until you’re feeling more stable.
Warning Signs That Need Medical Attention
Most stomach bugs and bouts of food poisoning resolve on their own within a day or two. But certain symptoms signal something more serious. Contact a healthcare provider if you can’t keep any liquids down for 24 hours, if vomiting or diarrhea lasts more than two days, or if you notice blood in your vomit or stool. A fever above 104°F, severe stomach pain, or signs of dehydration (extreme thirst, dark yellow urine, dizziness, very little urination) also warrant a call.
For children, the thresholds are lower. A fever of 102°F or higher, bloody diarrhea, unusual irritability or lethargy, or signs of dehydration like a dry mouth, no tears when crying, or fewer wet diapers than normal all warrant prompt medical evaluation. For infants, frequent vomiting, no wet diaper in six hours, or a sunken soft spot on the head are reasons to call the pediatrician right away.