You ate something, or you ate too much, or you ate too fast, and now it is sitting there. Nothing dramatic. Just heavy and wrong. Every food culture on earth has an answer to this, and the answers turn out to be remarkably closely related.
Read in the order the sun finds them — west to east, following the numbers.
a-TAY bee NAA-naa
You need
Brewed strong, poured from a height, drunk after every meal.
Digestive and hospitable in the same gesture — you are unlikely to be offered one without the other.
Sweet and intensely minty.
You need
A small glass after a heavy meal.
Bitter, taken after eating, to help a large meal along. An entire commercial category built on a principle Ayurveda calls deepana and Bengal calls shukto.
Bitter, sweet, herbal, warming.
نباتna-BAAT
You need
Stir a stick of it into hot water until it dissolves.
The Iranian answer to a bad stomach, and present on almost every Iranian table.
Sweet and gently floral from the saffron.
सौंफ · يانسون
You need
A pinch chewed after a meal. In the Levant, anise is steeped instead and given to babies for colic.
The after-meal seed, in two traditions, from one plant family.
Sweet and liquorice-like. Fennel is milder; anise is more insistent.
You need
Simmer the seeds for five minutes, strain, sip warm. Drunk between meals rather than with them.
Three seeds that kindle digestion without heating you up — the everyday Ayurvedic answer to heaviness.
Mild, savoury, faintly sweet from the fennel. Much pleasanter than it sounds.
छाछchaas
You need
Whisk one part yogurt to three parts water, season, drink at the end of a heavy meal.
Buttermilk is considered lighter than the yogurt it comes from, and easier on a labouring stomach.
Salty, sour, cooling. Somewhere between a drink and a thin soup.
JAH-moo KOON-yit AH-sam
You need
Boil the grated turmeric with tamarind pulp and palm sugar, strain, drink warm or chilled.
The most widely drunk jamu in Indonesia — for digestion, for period pain, and simply as a daily habit.
Earthy, sour, sweet all at once. Stains everything it touches.
陳皮chen pee
You need
Steep a piece in hot water for ten minutes. The peel is deliberately aged — older is more prized.
For bloating and fullness. Chinese medicine treats aged citrus peel as something that moves stuck qi downward.
Bitter orange, deep and slightly smoky. Nothing like fresh peel.
山楂shahn jah
You need
Simmered into a tart tea, or eaten as sweetened slices.
Specifically for what Chinese medicine calls food stagnation — the heavy, greasy meal that has not moved on. It is reached for after meat and oil in particular.
Sharply sour, like a dried crab apple.
매실차MEH-shil cha
You need
A spoonful of the syrup in water. Kept in the fridge in most Korean homes.
The Korean digestive — drunk after eating, and given for a queasy stomach.
Sweet and sour and very clean. Excellent cold in summer.
梅醤番茶OO-meh SHO ban-cha
You need
Mash the plum in the cup, add the shoyu, pour the tea over it.
The Japanese all-purpose restorative — for an upset stomach, for fatigue, and for the morning after.
Salty, sour, savoury. Closer to a broth than a tea, and strangely steadying.
You need
Grated fresh and eaten alongside oily food, not after it.
Raw daikon is considered to help heavy, fried food move. This is why a mound of it arrives beside tempura — the remedy is served with the problem.
Peppery and clean, like a mild radish, which it is.
Fennel. Anise. Cumin. Caraway. Dill. Ajwain. Coriander. Every one of those belongs to the same botanical family — Apiaceae — and cultures on four continents, with no contact between them, each reached into that one family and pulled out a seed for the stomach. India took cumin, coriander and ajwain. The Middle East took anise. Europe took caraway, fennel and dill. Mexico took cumin too. Nobody coordinated this. The plants were simply asked, everywhere, and they gave the same answer.
None of the above is medical advice. These are household preparations, described as the households that make them describe them. They sit alongside medical care and never in place of it.
With warmth, from a great many kitchens.