When your stomach hurts, the best foods are bland, low-fat, and easy to digest: think plain rice, bananas, toast, broth, and applesauce. These won’t cure your stomach ache, but they’re gentle enough to give you some calories and nutrients without making things worse. What matters most, though, is staying hydrated, especially if vomiting or diarrhea is involved.
Start With Liquids
If your stomach pain came with vomiting, solid food can wait. Clear liquids are the safest starting point: plain water, broth, ginger ale, diluted apple juice, popsicles, or tea without milk. Sip small amounts frequently rather than gulping a full glass, which can trigger more nausea. Once you’ve kept liquids down for a few hours, you can start adding simple solids.
If you’re losing fluids through vomiting or diarrhea, water alone isn’t enough because you’re also losing salt and potassium. An oral rehydration solution replaces both. You can buy commercial versions at any pharmacy, or make a simple one at home using the World Health Organization’s formula: about 4 cups of water, half a teaspoon of salt, and 2 tablespoons of sugar. Sports drinks and sodas aren’t ideal substitutes because they have the wrong balance of sugar and salt, which can actually pull more water into your intestines and worsen diarrhea.
Bland Foods That Are Easy on Your Stomach
You’ve probably heard of the BRAT diet: bananas, rice, applesauce, and toast. These foods are genuinely gentle on your digestive tract, and they’re a fine place to start. But nutritionally, they’re thin. They’re low in protein, fiber, calcium, and several vitamins, so sticking to only BRAT foods for more than a day or two can slow your recovery rather than help it.
A better approach is to think of BRAT as a starting lineup, not the whole team. As soon as you can tolerate it, expand to other easy-to-digest foods:
- Proteins: scrambled eggs, plain chicken breast, tofu, creamy peanut butter
- Starches: white rice, plain pasta, saltine crackers, oatmeal
- Cooked vegetables: well-cooked carrots, potatoes, green beans
- Dairy (if you tolerate it): plain yogurt, which also provides helpful bacteria for your gut
The goal is foods with no more than 1 to 2 grams of fiber per serving. Fiber is great when you’re healthy, but during a stomach ache it makes your digestive system work harder. Cooked and peeled vegetables are easier to handle than raw ones. White bread is easier than whole grain. Simple is better until you feel like yourself again.
What to Avoid Until You Feel Better
Fat is the biggest thing to cut back on. Fatty foods naturally slow stomach emptying, which means food sits in your stomach longer, creating more discomfort, bloating, and nausea. Skip fried food, heavy sauces, cheese-heavy dishes, and fatty cuts of meat until your stomach settles.
Other common irritants to avoid:
- Spicy foods, which can inflame an already irritated stomach lining
- Caffeine and alcohol, both of which increase acid production
- Raw vegetables and high-fiber foods like beans, whole grains, and raw salads
- Acidic foods like citrus fruits, tomato sauce, and vinegar-based dressings
- Carbonated drinks, which can increase bloating and gas
If you’re lactose intolerant, dairy will make things worse. Even people who normally handle dairy fine sometimes find it harder to digest during a stomach illness, so plain yogurt is a safer bet than milk or cheese.
Peppermint and Ginger for Cramping
Peppermint tea isn’t just a comfort ritual. Peppermint oil relaxes the smooth muscle lining your digestive tract by blocking calcium from entering muscle cells, which is essentially the same mechanism used by some prescription antispasmodic medications. If your stomach ache involves cramping or bloating, a cup of peppermint tea can provide real, measurable relief. Avoid it if your pain is related to acid reflux, though, because that same muscle relaxation can loosen the valve at the top of your stomach and let acid travel upward.
Ginger is another well-supported option, particularly for nausea. Fresh ginger steeped in hot water, ginger chews, or even flat ginger ale (let the carbonation go flat first) can help calm waves of nausea enough to get some food down.
Probiotics Can Shorten Recovery
If your stomach ache is part of a stomach bug with diarrhea, probiotics can meaningfully speed things up. Research shows that when combined with proper hydration, probiotics reduce the duration of diarrhea by about 25 hours and cut the risk of symptoms lasting beyond four days by nearly 60%. Yogurt with live cultures is one source. You can also find supplements containing strains like Lactobacillus rhamnosus GG or Saccharomyces boulardii, which have the strongest clinical evidence behind them.
Probiotics work best when started early in the illness alongside fluid replacement, not as a last resort days into it.
Feeding Kids With Stomach Aches
The advice for children has shifted significantly. The American Academy of Pediatrics no longer recommends the BRAT diet for kids, noting that it lacks enough nutrition to help a child’s gut recover and may actually extend symptoms. Instead, children should return to a normal, balanced diet within 24 hours of getting sick, including fruits, vegetables, meat, yogurt, and complex carbohydrates.
If a child is vomiting, pause solid food and offer small sips of a commercial electrolyte solution (not sports drinks, juice, or soda, which have the wrong sugar-to-salt ratio and can worsen diarrhea). Once vomiting slows, usually within a day or two, gradually reintroduce their normal diet. Breastfed babies can continue nursing throughout. For severe diarrhea with signs of dehydration like dry mouth, no tears, or very few wet diapers, seek medical attention promptly.
Signs Your Stomach Ache Needs Medical Attention
Most stomach aches resolve on their own within a day or two with rest, fluids, and gentle eating. But certain patterns signal something more serious. Get medical help if your pain is sudden and severe, feels sharp or tearing, or gets progressively worse over hours rather than better. A rigid, extremely tender abdomen, or pain so intense you can’t stand upright or find a comfortable position, needs urgent evaluation.
Also take it seriously if your stomach ache comes with vomiting blood or material that looks like coffee grounds, black or tarry stools, bright red blood in your stool, a fever that won’t break, yellowing skin or eyes, rapid heartbeat, or lightheadedness. Pain lasting more than a few days without improvement, unexplained weight loss, or new changes in bowel habits are worth a call to your doctor, especially if you’re over 65, pregnant, or have a chronic health condition.