When you have gastroenteritis, the best foods are bland, easy-to-digest options like white rice, bananas, plain crackers, and lean proteins such as baked chicken or steamed white fish. But the old advice to stick to an ultra-restrictive diet until symptoms fully clear has largely been replaced. Current guidelines emphasize returning to a normal diet as quickly as your body tolerates it, because your gut needs nutrition to heal.
Start Slow After Vomiting
If you’ve been throwing up, give your stomach a short break of a few hours before trying to eat or drink anything substantial. Start by sucking on ice chips or taking small sips of water every 15 minutes. Once you can keep fluids down, move to small, frequent meals rather than jumping straight into a full plate. Eating slowly and in smaller portions puts less strain on your irritated stomach and helps you gauge what you can tolerate.
There’s no magic number of hours you need to wait. Some people feel ready to nibble on crackers within an hour or two of their last episode of vomiting. Others need half a day. The key signal is that nausea has eased enough that the thought of food doesn’t make it worse.
Foods That Are Easiest on Your Gut
Starchy, low-fiber foods are your best starting point. White rice, plain toast, saltine crackers, and pasta made with refined white flour are all gentle choices. Cooked cereals like Cream of Wheat work well too. These starchy foods do more than just sit easy in your stomach. Starches help your intestines absorb sodium and water more efficiently, which directly counters the fluid loss from diarrhea.
For protein, stick with lean, simply prepared options: baked or steamed chicken breast, white fish, eggs, or tofu. Avoid adding butter, oil, or heavy sauces. On the fruit side, bananas, applesauce, melon, and canned fruit (in juice, not heavy syrup) are well tolerated. These provide some natural sugars and potassium without overwhelming your digestive system.
What About the BRAT Diet?
The BRAT diet (bananas, rice, applesauce, and toast) has been a go-to recommendation for decades, and those four foods are still perfectly fine choices. But the CDC and other major health organizations no longer recommend it as a formal protocol. The reason: it’s unnecessarily restrictive and provides suboptimal nutrition for a recovering gut. Your intestines need a range of nutrients to repair themselves, not just four bland items on repeat.
The current consensus is that you should return to a normal, age-appropriate diet as soon as you can tolerate it. Gut rest is not indicated. If you can handle more variety, eating it is better for recovery than limiting yourself to bananas and toast for days.
Foods and Drinks to Avoid
Some foods and drinks actively make diarrhea worse. The main categories to steer clear of:
- Fatty and fried foods like pizza, fast food, and anything deep-fried. Fat is hard to digest even when your gut is healthy, and it can speed up intestinal contractions.
- Caffeinated drinks including coffee, tea, and many soft drinks. Caffeine stimulates your intestines and can worsen diarrhea.
- Sugary drinks and fruit juice. Sodas and juices have very high sugar concentrations that pull water into your intestines through osmosis, making diarrhea worse. Cola contains roughly five times the glucose recommended in oral rehydration solutions, and its osmolality (a measure of how concentrated a liquid is) far exceeds what the WHO recommends for rehydration. Flat soda is no better.
- Dairy products. Gastroenteritis can temporarily damage the cells in your intestinal lining that produce lactase, the enzyme needed to digest milk sugar. Some people have trouble with dairy for a month or more after a bout of stomach flu. Yogurt is sometimes better tolerated than milk because the bacteria in it help break down lactose, but if dairy seems to trigger cramping or diarrhea, skip it until you’re fully recovered.
- Alcohol and spicy foods. Both irritate your already inflamed gut lining.
Hydration Matters More Than Food
Dehydration is the biggest risk with gastroenteritis, especially if you’re losing fluids from both ends. Water alone replaces volume but not the electrolytes (sodium, potassium, chloride) your body is losing. Oral rehydration solutions, available over the counter at any pharmacy, are specifically formulated with the right balance of salt and sugar to maximize fluid absorption. They’re the single most effective tool for managing gastroenteritis at home.
Broth-based soups pull double duty here. They provide sodium, some calories, and warm liquid that’s easy to sip. Clear chicken or vegetable broth is a good early option before you’re ready for solid food. If you’re making your own rehydration drink, aim for a low sugar concentration. High-sugar beverages like sports drinks are better than nothing, but they contain more sugar than ideal and can contribute to osmotic diarrhea if you drink large amounts.
Probiotics May Shorten Recovery
Two specific probiotic strains have solid clinical evidence behind them for acute gastroenteritis. Lactobacillus rhamnosus GG (often labeled LGG on supplement packaging) reduced the duration of diarrhea by roughly one day in a systematic review covering nearly 3,000 patients across 15 randomized trials. Saccharomyces boulardii, a beneficial yeast available as a supplement, significantly reduced the risk of diarrhea lasting four or more days.
For LGG, higher doses (at least 10 billion colony-forming units, written as 10¹⁰ CFU on the label) were more effective than lower doses. You can find both strains at most pharmacies and health food stores. They’re not a cure, but shaving a day off your symptoms is meaningful when you’re miserable.
Feeding Children With Gastroenteritis
The advice for kids is essentially the same as for adults, with a few important additions. Children who are already eating solid or semi-solid foods should continue their usual diet during diarrhea episodes. Restricting them to the BRAT diet or clear liquids for extended periods can leave them short on the calories and nutrients they need, especially when they’re small and have fewer reserves.
Breastfed infants should continue breastfeeding throughout the illness. Breast milk provides fluid, calories, and immune factors that support recovery. For formula-fed babies and toddlers, a commercially prepared oral rehydration solution (like Pedialyte) is the best option for replacing lost fluids. Avoid giving young children fruit juice, soda, or homemade sugar-salt mixtures, as getting the concentration wrong is easy and can worsen diarrhea or, in rare cases, cause dangerous electrolyte imbalances.
A Practical Day-by-Day Approach
During the worst of it (active vomiting or severe diarrhea), focus entirely on fluids. Small, frequent sips of an oral rehydration solution, water, or clear broth. Don’t force food.
Once vomiting slows or stops, introduce small amounts of bland starches: a few bites of plain rice, a couple of crackers, half a banana. Eat every two to three hours in small portions rather than three big meals. This gives your stomach less to process at once.
As symptoms improve over the next one to three days, gradually add lean proteins (eggs, baked chicken, steamed fish) and well-cooked vegetables. Reintroduce dairy cautiously, starting with a small amount of yogurt. If you notice cramping or looser stools after dairy, hold off for another week or two. Most people can return to their full normal diet within a few days to a week, though some find that rich, fatty, or heavily spiced meals don’t sit well for a bit longer. Let your body’s response guide you rather than following a rigid timeline.