The best foods to eat during a hangover are ones that raise your blood sugar steadily, replace lost electrolytes, and go easy on your irritated stomach. That means reaching for bland, nutrient-dense options like oatmeal, bananas, eggs, toast, and broth rather than anything greasy, spicy, or acidic. Here’s why each one helps and what to skip.
Why Hangovers Make You Feel So Awful
Your hangover isn’t just “too much alcohol.” It’s several overlapping problems hitting you at once. When your liver breaks down alcohol, it produces a toxic byproduct called acetaldehyde, which triggers inflammation throughout your body. At the same time, alcohol ramps up stomach acid production and slows down stomach emptying, which is why your gut feels wrecked the morning after.
The other big piece is blood sugar. While your liver is busy processing alcohol, it deprioritizes its normal job of regulating glucose. That leaves you with low blood sugar, which drives the fatigue, shakiness, and brain fog that make hangovers so miserable. Alcohol is also a diuretic, so you’ve lost fluids and minerals like potassium and sodium overnight. The right foods address all of these issues at once.
Complex Carbs for Blood Sugar
Your first priority is getting your blood sugar back up, but you want to do it gradually. Simple sugars will spike and crash, leaving you worse off. Complex carbohydrates provide a slow, steady release of glucose into your bloodstream, which helps with the fatigue and fogginess.
Oatmeal is one of the best options here. It’s gentle on your stomach, easy to prepare, and delivers sustained energy. Whole-grain toast with a little honey works too. The honey adds a bonus: fructose, which research from the Journal of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics found helps the body clear alcohol faster than other sugars. In that study, fructose shortened the time alcohol appeared in expired air by about half an hour compared to glucose. A drizzle of honey on toast or stirred into oatmeal gives you both slow-burning carbs and a small fructose boost.
Plain crackers or rice are solid alternatives if oatmeal sounds unappealing. The goal is bland, starchy food that won’t challenge your stomach while refueling your depleted glucose stores.
Bananas and Coconut Water for Electrolytes
You’ve lost significant potassium and sodium through alcohol’s diuretic effect, and replacing them helps with headaches, muscle weakness, and that general washed-out feeling. Bananas are the classic choice for good reason: a medium banana delivers roughly 400 milligrams of potassium, and its soft texture is easy on a sensitive stomach.
Coconut water is even more efficient. A single cup contains about 600 milligrams of potassium (roughly the amount in one and a half bananas) plus 252 milligrams of sodium. That combination of both electrolytes in one drink makes it a better recovery option than plain water alone. Unlike bananas, which have almost no sodium, coconut water covers both bases.
Broth or soup is another strong electrolyte source. Chicken broth or miso soup delivers sodium and fluids in a warm, easy-to-digest package. If you’re too nauseated to eat solid food, sipping broth is a good starting point before working up to something more substantial.
Eggs for Liver Support
Eggs are a hangover staple for a reason beyond tradition. They’re rich in cysteine, an amino acid your body uses to produce glutathione, one of the key compounds your liver needs to break down the toxic byproducts of alcohol metabolism. Scrambled or boiled eggs are gentle enough for most upset stomachs, and the protein helps stabilize blood sugar alongside carbs.
Pair eggs with toast for a combination that covers multiple recovery needs at once: protein, fat, complex carbs, and amino acids that support your liver’s cleanup work.
Ginger for Nausea
If nausea is your main symptom, ginger is the most evidence-backed natural remedy available. Compounds called gingerols simultaneously speed up the movement of food through your digestive tract and calm the stomach contractions that trigger the urge to vomit. Studies have found effective doses ranging from 250 milligrams to 1 gram, taken one to four times a day.
Fresh ginger sliced into hot water makes a simple tea. Ginger chews or ginger supplements work too. Store-bought ginger ale is less reliable since many brands contain minimal actual ginger and plenty of sugar and carbonation, both of which can make things worse. If you go the ginger ale route, let it go flat first, and check the ingredient list for real ginger.
What to Avoid
Some common hangover “remedies” actually make things worse. Alcohol increases stomach acid and can trigger acid reflux, so anything that compounds those effects will prolong your misery.
- Spicy food: Further irritates an already-inflamed stomach lining and can worsen reflux.
- Acidic foods like citrus or tomato juice: Adds more acid to a stomach that’s already producing too much of it.
- Coffee: Caffeine can worsen dehydration, increase stomach acid, and trigger heartburn. If you need it to function, keep it small and drink water alongside it.
- Carbonated drinks: Carbonation may increase the rate your body absorbs any remaining alcohol, and the bubbles can aggravate nausea. In one study, 67 percent of participants absorbed alcohol faster when it was mixed with carbonated water compared to still water.
- More alcohol (“hair of the dog”): This delays your recovery and compounds the problem. It temporarily masks symptoms by keeping your blood alcohol level up, but you’re just pushing the hangover down the road while adding more toxins for your liver to process.
A Simple Hangover Meal Plan
If you’re feeling too rough to think through food choices, here’s a practical sequence. Start with fluids first: water, coconut water, or ginger tea. Give yourself 20 to 30 minutes to see how your stomach responds. If nausea settles, move to something small and bland like a banana or a few crackers. Once that stays down comfortably, go for a more complete meal: oatmeal with honey, or scrambled eggs on whole-grain toast with a glass of coconut water on the side.
Eat slowly. Your stomach is still emptying more slowly than normal thanks to the alcohol, so large portions all at once can trigger nausea even with the right foods. Small, frequent bites over the course of an hour or two tend to work better than one big plate. Most people find their appetite and energy return meaningfully within a few hours of eating and rehydrating, though severe hangovers can linger through the full day.