When you have diarrhea, the best foods are bland, low-fiber, and easy to digest: bananas, white rice, applesauce, toast, brothy soups, boiled potatoes, and oatmeal. These foods give your gut a chance to recover without adding irritation, and some actively help firm up loose stools. Just as important is what you avoid and how you stay hydrated, since diarrhea pulls water and minerals out of your body fast.
The BRAT Diet Still Works, but You Can Eat More
You’ve probably heard of the BRAT diet: bananas, rice, applesauce, and toast. It’s been a go-to recommendation for decades, and it’s still a reasonable starting point for the first day or two of stomach flu, food poisoning, or traveler’s diarrhea. But there’s no research showing those four foods are better than other bland options. Harvard Health notes that a less restrictive approach makes more sense, because limiting yourself to just bananas and white rice means you’re missing protein and nutrients your body needs to recover.
Beyond the classic BRAT foods, good options include brothy soups, oatmeal, boiled potatoes, crackers, and unsweetened dry cereals. All of these are gentle on the stomach and easy to digest. Once your symptoms start settling down, you can expand to cooked squash (butternut or pumpkin), cooked carrots, sweet potatoes without skin, avocado, skinless chicken or turkey, fish, and eggs. These add protein and vitamins while still being mild enough to keep things calm.
How Soluble Fiber Helps Firm Things Up
It sounds counterintuitive to eat fiber when you have diarrhea, but soluble fiber is different from the roughage most people picture. Soluble fiber dissolves in water and forms a gel-like material in your stomach that slows digestion. It absorbs excess water in the gut and adds bulk to stool, which is exactly what you need when things are too loose and watery.
Good sources of soluble fiber include oats, bananas, applesauce, carrots, and barley. You’ll notice some of these overlap with the BRAT foods, which is part of why they work. Peas, beans, and citrus fruits are also high in soluble fiber, but they can cause gas and cramping when your gut is already irritated, so save those for later in recovery. Stick with the gentler options first.
Replacing Lost Fluids and Electrolytes
Diarrhea doesn’t just flush out food. It pulls significant amounts of water, sodium, and potassium from your body. If you don’t replace them, you’ll feel weak, dizzy, and exhausted on top of already feeling miserable. Drinking plain water helps, but it doesn’t replace the minerals you’re losing.
The World Health Organization’s oral rehydration solution is simple to make at home: combine about 4 cups of water with half a teaspoon of salt and 2 tablespoons of sugar. The sugar helps your intestines absorb the water and salt more efficiently. Broth, fruit juices (diluted if they’re very sweet), sports drinks, and even popsicles all contribute to rehydration.
For potassium specifically, ripe bananas are your best friend during diarrhea since they’re gentle and potassium-rich. Once you’re tolerating more foods, potatoes, fish, and meat are also good sources. Low potassium makes you feel weak and fatigued, so actively eating these foods speeds how quickly you feel like yourself again.
Foods and Drinks That Make Diarrhea Worse
What you avoid matters as much as what you eat. Several common foods and drinks actively pull more water into your bowels or speed up digestion, both of which make loose stools worse.
- Caffeine speeds up the digestive system, pushing everything through faster than your colon can absorb water. Skip coffee, energy drinks, and strong tea until you’ve recovered.
- Dairy products contain lactose, a milk sugar that many people already struggle to digest fully. During a bout of diarrhea, even people who normally tolerate dairy may have trouble with it because the infection can temporarily damage the enzymes that break down lactose.
- Fried and fatty foods are poorly absorbed when the gut is inflamed. Undigested fat reaches the colon and triggers it to secrete fluid, making diarrhea worse.
- Sugar in large amounts stimulates the gut to release water and electrolytes, loosening bowel movements. People who consume more than 40 to 80 grams of fructose per day (common with fruit juice, honey, or high-fructose corn syrup) are especially likely to develop diarrhea from sugar alone.
- Artificial sweeteners like sorbitol, mannitol, and xylitol (found in sugar-free gum, candy, and some protein bars) are known to cause loose stools even in healthy people.
- Spicy foods can irritate the digestive tract and mask high fat content. They also cause burning during bowel movements, which is the last thing you need.
All of these fall into a broader category called FODMAPs: poorly digested sugars that ferment in the gut and draw in water. If you notice that diarrhea keeps coming back even after an acute illness passes, it’s worth looking at whether fructose, lactose, artificial sweeteners, or gluten are regular parts of your diet. People with gluten sensitivity or celiac disease often experience chronic diarrhea that resolves only when gluten is removed.
Probiotics Can Shorten Recovery
Probiotics are live bacteria that help restore the balance of your gut microbiome after it’s been disrupted by infection. A large Cochrane review of clinical trials found that probiotics reduced the average duration of diarrhea by about 30 hours and significantly lowered the risk of diarrhea still continuing at day three.
Not all probiotics are equally effective. The strain that’s been studied most for diarrhea is Lactobacillus GG (also labeled Lactobacillus rhamnosus GG), which performed especially well in children with rotavirus. In one trial, children receiving this strain had dramatically lower stool frequency by day three compared to those on placebo. However, the same strain showed little benefit for bacterial diarrhea specifically, so results vary depending on the cause. Yogurt with live active cultures is the easiest food source, though you may want to choose a dairy-free option if lactose is bothering you. Probiotic supplements are another route, but look for products that list specific strains on the label.
When to Start Eating Normally Again
There’s no strict timeline for returning to a normal diet, and the old advice to fast for a prolonged period before reintroducing food doesn’t hold up. A Cochrane review on refeeding after acute diarrhea found no evidence that eating early (within 12 hours of starting rehydration) increases complications or makes diarrhea last longer. In other words, you don’t need to starve your gut to let it heal. Eat when you feel ready, starting with bland foods and expanding as tolerated.
Most people can return to their regular diet within two to three days as symptoms improve. Add foods back gradually: start with the gentle proteins like chicken and eggs, then reintroduce cooked vegetables, and save raw vegetables, high-fiber grains, dairy, and fatty foods for last. If a food brings symptoms back, pull it out and try again in another day or two.
Signs of Dehydration to Watch For
The biggest risk with diarrhea isn’t the diarrhea itself; it’s dehydration. In adults, warning signs include dizziness, rapid pulse, confusion, and producing little or no urine. In babies and toddlers, look for a dry tongue and lips, no tears when crying, fewer than six wet diapers a day (or no urination for eight hours in toddlers), sunken eyes, and a sunken soft spot on the head. Lethargy in a baby, meaning noticeably more sleepy and less playful than usual, is a sign to get medical help quickly. A fever above 103°F, seizures, or fainting in anyone with diarrhea signals severe dehydration that needs emergency treatment.