When your stomach hurts, the best foods are bland, low-fat, and easy to digest: plain rice, bananas, toast, broth, oatmeal, and boiled potatoes. What you should eat depends partly on what type of stomach pain you’re dealing with, whether it’s nausea, cramping, diarrhea, or acid reflux. The wrong choice can make things worse, so it helps to match your food to your symptoms.
Start With Bland, Easy-to-Digest Foods
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. Harvard Health Publishing notes that brothy soups, oatmeal, boiled potatoes, crackers, and unsweetened dry cereals are equally easy on the stomach. The key principle is the same across all of them: simple carbohydrates with minimal fat, fiber, or spice.
Once your stomach starts to settle, usually within a day or two, you can expand to more nutritious options. Cooked squash (butternut or pumpkin), cooked carrots, sweet potatoes without skin, skinless chicken or turkey, fish, and eggs all qualify as bland but provide the protein your body needs to recover. Staying on nothing but rice and toast for too long actually slows recovery because you’re not giving your body enough fuel to heal.
If You Feel Nauseous
Ginger is one of the most reliable natural options for nausea. The active compounds in ginger block serotonin receptors involved in the vomiting reflex and help your stomach empty more efficiently when it’s sluggish. Research on chemotherapy patients found that about 1 gram of ginger per day (roughly half a teaspoon of ground ginger) reduced acute vomiting by 70% compared to a placebo when taken for more than four days. You don’t need to be on chemo for ginger to help; the mechanism works the same way regardless of the cause.
Practical ways to get ginger in: ginger tea made from fresh slices steeped in hot water, ginger chews, or a small amount of ground ginger stirred into warm water. Avoid ginger ale, which typically contains very little actual ginger and a lot of sugar that can worsen nausea.
If You Have Diarrhea
Soluble fiber absorbs water in the gut and adds bulk to loose stool, turning it from watery to formed. Good sources include oatmeal, bananas, applesauce, cooked carrots, and white rice. These foods form a gel-like material in the stomach that slows digestion down, giving your intestines more time to absorb water.
Hydration matters more than food when diarrhea is the main problem. You lose both water and electrolytes, and plain water alone doesn’t replace both. A simple oral rehydration solution you can make at home: 4 cups of water, half a teaspoon of table salt, and 2 tablespoons of sugar. The sugar isn’t just for taste; it helps your intestines absorb the sodium and water more effectively. Sip it throughout the day rather than drinking large amounts at once.
Probiotics can also shorten diarrhea. A large Cochrane review found that probiotics reduced the average duration of diarrhea by about 30 hours. Yogurt with live cultures is the easiest food source, though fermented foods like kefir work too. Look for products that list specific strains on the label, particularly Lactobacillus GG, which showed the strongest results in studies.
If It Feels Like Heartburn or Acid Reflux
When stomach pain is really a burning sensation behind your breastbone or in your upper abdomen, the issue is often acid moving where it shouldn’t. Foods with a higher pH (more alkaline) can help offset that acidity. Johns Hopkins Medicine recommends bananas, melons, cauliflower, fennel, and nuts as alkaline options that are unlikely to trigger reflux.
Oatmeal is a particularly good choice here because it absorbs acid, fills you up without being heavy, and doesn’t irritate the stomach lining. Plain, unsweetened oatmeal made with water is the gentlest version. Avoid adding citrus, tomato-based foods, chocolate, coffee, or anything fried, all of which increase acid production or relax the valve between your stomach and esophagus.
One caution: peppermint tea is often recommended for stomach pain, and it does work well for cramping (more on that below), but it can make heartburn worse. Peppermint relaxes the same muscle that keeps stomach acid from flowing upward. If your pain is a burning sensation, skip the peppermint.
If You Have Cramping or Spasms
Stomach cramps happen when the smooth muscle in your digestive tract contracts too forcefully. Peppermint oil works as a natural antispasmodic by blocking calcium from entering those muscle cells, which is the same basic mechanism as some prescription muscle relaxants. Peppermint tea is the simplest option. If you’re using peppermint oil capsules, look for enteric-coated versions, which dissolve in the intestine rather than the stomach, reducing the chance of triggering reflux.
Warm bone broth is another good option for cramping. It’s easy to sip when solid food feels like too much, and it provides collagen and amino acids that support the gut lining. The Cleveland Clinic notes that collagen from bone broth may help restore the thinning intestinal lining that can contribute to ongoing digestive issues. Chicken or beef broth both work; homemade versions simmered for several hours tend to have higher collagen content than store-bought, though any broth is better than nothing when your stomach is in knots.
What to Avoid Until You Feel Better
Fat is the single biggest thing to cut when your stomach hurts. Fat in the small intestine triggers a powerful signal that slows stomach emptying to a crawl. Your stomach relaxes its upper portion and reduces contractions in the lower portion, essentially holding food in place until the fat is absorbed. This is why greasy or fried food sits like a brick when you’re already uncomfortable. The same goes for rich sauces, cheese, butter, and fatty cuts of meat.
Beyond fat, avoid dairy (except yogurt, which is partially pre-digested by its bacterial cultures), raw vegetables with tough skins, whole grains with insoluble fiber, alcohol, caffeine, and anything spicy. These all either increase acid production, speed up gut motility in unhelpful ways, or require significant digestive effort your stomach isn’t up for right now.
Carbonated drinks are another common mistake. The gas can distend your stomach and increase pressure, making both pain and nausea worse. Stick to flat liquids: water, broth, herbal tea, or the rehydration solution mentioned above.
How to Eat, Not Just What
Portion size matters as much as food choice. Small, frequent meals every two to three hours put less strain on your digestive system than three large ones. Think half a banana and a few crackers, not a full plate of food. Eating slowly and chewing thoroughly also reduces the workload on your stomach, since mechanical digestion starts in your mouth.
Temperature plays a role too. Room-temperature and warm foods are generally easier to tolerate than very hot or very cold items. Ice-cold drinks can trigger stomach contractions in some people, while scalding soup can irritate an already inflamed lining. Aim for comfortably warm.