Future Docs Blog

A stomach bug is an infection that can be hard to overcome. Intestinal infection is often defined by abdominal cramps, nausea, vomiting, and sometimes fever. While eating is unappealing during a stomach bug, it’s important to prioritize the right foods and focus on healing while you’re moving past this infection.

Here are some ideas for what to eat after dinner after a stomach bug.

Focus On Liquids

Make sure throughout dinner you’re drinking lots and staying hydrated. Water works but so will clear soda or broth. Try to drink in small sips but also frequently. You don’t want to reject what you’re putting in, but you still need to stay hydrated. Hydration will help a ton.

Soup Or Stew Is the Best

As you recover from eating after a stomach bug, you should ease into your usual diet. Start with the foods that are easiest to digest. Soup or stew both fit that definition.

Especially homemade, soup is healthy and easy to keep down. This builds upon the broth suggestion, expanding to include soft vegetables, soft chicken or similar protein, and herbs and spices.

Boil Some Rice

Rice is easy to digest for someone in recovery from a gastrointestinal illness. In white and whole-grain form, rice can be either made on its own or tossed in with some soup. You can add in anything else you like, in terms of broth or spices and herbs. It may be best not to fry the rice. Keep it soft. A rice cooker does this best if you have one available.

Meal Plan Delivery Service

A meal plan delivery service is another resource you can use if you don’t want to do much work. With a meal plan delivery service, you can customize what you’re going to eat for the period ahead and choose meals for yourself that you know work.

All the hard work’s pretty much done for you, and all you’ll have to do is cook it up. After a stomach bug, this makes eating dinner so much easier.

For Meat, Go Chicken

Chicken is one of the easiest meats to digest and shouldn’t cause a rise in inflammation like red meat. You can make chicken in many ways, from poaching to baking or roasting it.

Avoid fried foods, including fried chicken, if you can help. Also, chew everything thoroughly to ensure it goes down easy.

Toasted Sandwiches

Take a few pieces of bread, toast them, and lay out your favourite sandwich sauce or even margarine works. A quick toasted sandwich is an easy meal to make, and you can fill it with whatever you like, from chicken to veggies, peanut butter and jam, flaked tuna, or make a grilled cheese. It should be easy to keep down.

Try a Combination of Snacks

If you don’t have enough to make a meal for dinner, throw together some easy-on-the-stomach snacks. Jello and gelatin are easy to digest. Crackers are easy. A banana also works, as will apple sauce. These sorts of things can be combined on a plate for a meal as small or as sizeable as you want to make it.

Foods to Avoid After a Stomach Bug

For some foods, take a day or two before eating them again. Any dairy products should be gone. Alcohol and nicotine are both bad for stomach bug recovery. Caffeine is probably a bad idea, whether from coffee or cola.

Unfortunately, processed foods or anything fatty, spicy, or very seasoned should also be excluded. If you like a certain type of food, perhaps there’s a way to enjoy it not so processed or made differently to keep it closer to plain.

Try Some Probiotic-Containing Yogurt

Dairy is generally bad, but yogurt is good if your stomach can tolerate it. Try to find yogurt with probiotics in them. This can aid digestion and is less bland than many other food suggestions people will give you for what to eat after a stomach illness. If you’re lactose-intolerant, though, steer clear of it.

Have Tea After Your Dinner

After your meal, if you want to top it off the right way, go for a decaffeinated tea. Tea naturally soothes the stomach, reduces inflammation, hydrates the body, and can curb any nausea you might be struggling with.

The best teas for a stomach bug include peppermint, chamomile, or ginger, although almost any tea is better than no tea in this situation.

Approaches to Eating

For more ideas on what to eat for dinner after a stomach bug, you could look into a few food lifestyles. The BRAT diet is the most popular. ‘BRAT’ stands for bananas, rice, apple sauce, and toast.

It’s all about eating bland, easy-to-digest foods. Similarly, you may find something in the low-residue diet, which involves foods that stay in the stomach for less time because they’re low-residue.