Bland, starchy foods are your best options during a bout of diarrhea. Boiled potatoes, white rice, noodles, crackers, bananas, soup, and boiled vegetables are all easy on your digestive system and unlikely to make things worse. The goal is to eat simple, low-fat, low-fiber foods that give your gut a chance to recover while still providing the calories your body needs to heal.
Why Eating Matters During Diarrhea
It’s tempting to stop eating altogether when your stomach is in revolt, but adequate nutrition during diarrhea helps your intestinal lining repair itself. The cells lining your gut turn over rapidly, and they need fuel to regenerate. If nausea or vomiting makes eating impossible, a short period of clear liquids won’t cause harm. But as soon as you can tolerate food, start with small portions of bland items and build from there.
The Best Foods to Reach For
You’ve probably heard of the BRAT diet: bananas, rice, applesauce, and toast. These foods are genuinely helpful because they’re low in fiber, easy to digest, and unlikely to irritate your gut. But the BRAT diet alone isn’t nutritionally complete, so think of it as a starting point rather than a strict plan. As soon as you feel able, mix in other gentle foods.
Good choices include:
- Boiled starches: white rice, plain noodles, potatoes, crackers
- Cooked cereals: oatmeal, cream of wheat, rice cereal (unsweetened)
- Soft fruits: bananas, applesauce
- Boiled or steamed vegetables: carrots, green beans, squash
- Broth-based soups: chicken soup, vegetable broth with noodles or rice
- Yogurt: unlike other dairy products, yogurt is typically well tolerated and contains beneficial bacteria
- Lean protein: plain baked chicken or turkey, scrambled eggs
Adding a little salt to your starches and soups helps replace the sodium you’re losing. Soup is especially useful because it delivers fluid, salt, and calories in one go.
Soluble Fiber Can Help Firm Things Up
Not all fiber is your enemy during diarrhea. Soluble fiber absorbs water in your gut and forms a gel-like consistency, which slows digestion and helps firm up loose stools. Oatmeal, bananas, and applesauce are all sources of soluble fiber, which is one reason they show up on every “what to eat with diarrhea” list.
Insoluble fiber, on the other hand, adds bulk and speeds things along. That’s great for constipation but counterproductive right now. Raw vegetables, whole wheat bread, bran, and the skins of fruits and vegetables are high in insoluble fiber. Save those for after you’ve recovered.
Foods and Drinks That Make Diarrhea Worse
Some foods actively pull water into your intestines or speed up your digestive tract, both of which make diarrhea worse. Knowing what to avoid is just as important as knowing what to eat.
Fatty and fried foods are poorly absorbed when your gut is inflamed. Undigested fat reaches your colon, where it’s broken down into fatty acids that trigger your colon to secrete even more fluid.
Dairy products (other than yogurt) can be a problem because diarrhea, especially from infections, temporarily damages the enzymes that break down lactose. This secondary lactose intolerance can persist for several weeks after the illness itself has passed, so you may want to ease back into milk, cheese, and ice cream gradually.
Sugar and artificial sweeteners are major offenders. Sugars stimulate your gut to release water and electrolytes, loosening your stools further. Fructose is particularly problematic. It’s concentrated in fruit juices, soda, applesauce with added sugar, and certain whole fruits like pears, cherries, and apples. Ingesting more than 40 to 80 grams of fructose per day can trigger diarrhea even in healthy people. Artificial sweeteners like sorbitol, mannitol, and xylitol, found in sugar-free gum, candy, and some medications, have the same osmotic effect.
Caffeine speeds up your digestive system, so coffee, tea, chocolate, and caffeinated sodas all work against you right now.
Alcohol irritates the gut lining and has a dehydrating effect, making it one of the worst choices during a diarrheal episode.
Staying Hydrated
Diarrhea strips your body of water and electrolytes fast. Replacing fluids is the single most important thing you can do. Plain water helps, but it doesn’t replace the sodium and potassium you’re losing. Oral rehydration solutions (available at any pharmacy) are specifically designed for this. Broth, diluted fruit juice, and coconut water also work well.
Sip small amounts frequently rather than drinking large volumes at once, especially if you’re also dealing with nausea. Watch for signs of dehydration: dark urine, urinating less than usual, extreme thirst, dizziness, confusion, or skin that doesn’t flatten back right away after you pinch it. In children, warning signs include no tears when crying, a dry mouth, no wet diapers for three hours, sunken eyes, and unusual irritability or sleepiness.
Probiotics and Gut Recovery
Probiotics can shorten the duration of diarrhea, though the benefit depends on the specific strain. In clinical trials, one well-studied strain (Lactobacillus rhamnosus GG) reduced the duration of acute diarrhea by roughly 19 hours compared to standard treatment with oral rehydration and zinc alone. Yogurt with live active cultures is the simplest way to introduce beneficial bacteria. Probiotic supplements are another option, but quality varies widely between brands.
Your gut microbiome takes a hit during diarrhea, and restoring it helps your digestion normalize faster. Fermented foods like yogurt and kefir serve double duty by providing both probiotics and easy-to-digest calories.
Feeding Children With Diarrhea
The same general principles apply to kids, with a few important differences. Breastfed infants should continue nursing on demand. For bottle-fed babies, lactose-free or lactose-reduced formula is ideal right after rehydration. If that’s unavailable, regular formula can be used, but watch for signs that the lactose is making things worse.
Older children who eat table foods should return to their regular diet as quickly as they can tolerate it. Rice, potatoes, noodles, crackers, bananas, yogurt, cooked vegetables, and cereals are all good options. Avoid soft drinks, undiluted apple juice, gelatin desserts, and presweetened cereals. These are high in simple sugars that pull water into the intestines through osmotic effects, which is exactly what you’re trying to stop.
How Quickly to Return to Normal Eating
Most bouts of acute diarrhea resolve within a few days. Once your stools start to firm up, gradually reintroduce your normal diet. Start with small amounts of the foods you’ve been avoiding and see how your body responds. Dairy is often the last category to come back comfortably because the lactose-digesting enzymes in your gut can take weeks to fully recover after an infection.
If diarrhea persists for more than 24 hours, you notice blood or black color in your stool, you develop a fever above 102°F, or you can’t keep fluids down, those are signs that something more than diet needs attention.