I've lived in Taiwan for over 22 years, and I've eaten Taiwanese food regularly for that length of time. I consider most Taiwanese food both nutritious and safe to eat. If you don't think so you might be eating in the wrong places, or pursuing types of food that are better eaten in moderation.
1. The First Time I Got Food Poisoning
This is one I remember very clearly because I was so new to Taiwan when it happened, and also because the events preceding it were so unusual. I'd only been in Taiwan for a few weeks, it was my first time anywhere in Asia, and most local foods were completely unfamiliar to me.
I was walking through the Fengjia Night Market in Taichung when I noticed that a fried food stall was selling skewers of chicken hearts near the entrance to the university. Chicken hearts? Never had those! Let's give them a try!
I finished about half my skewer of terrible-tasting chicken hearts before I threw the remaining hearts down a nearby alley. Seconds later an alley cat ran out from the shadows where it had been hiding nearby, sniffed the discarded hearts, and decided that no, they weren't worth eating. That's when I knew I was in trouble.
I spent the next few days enjoying diarrhea, a high fever, and various other complaints. I believe I also got medicine at some point, but it didn't help much. Lesson learned I suppose, but I could have done without the education.
2. Other Times I Got Food Poisoning
The 9-21 Earthquake is partly to blame for the fact that I can no longer eat shrimp. Unbeknownst to me, the power in the local Hyper Mart went down either during or just after that momentous event, resulting in refrigerated shrimp that weren't entirely refrigerated.
To this day the mere smell of shrimp makes me sick, and as a result I have to avoid a lot of local foods that contain it. I'll still eat it accidentally and find out later on (蝦米 and 蝦仁 are in a lot of foods), but as long as I'm not aware of eating them it's not a problem. It's a mental block I don't seem able to overcome. I can remember enjoying shrimp. I just can't do it now.
Shortly after that I got very sick from some garlic bread I bought at a bakery. I was sweating and feverish for days, and at one point it got so bad I even fell down a flight of stairs. Thankfully I can still eat garlic bread.
The chicken hearts, shrimp and bread episodes all happened when I was new to Taiwanese food. I wasn't eating the most balanced diet then, and I also wasn't able to distinguish hygienic from unhygienic food. After you've been around a while you'll begin to notice "warning signs" with regard to particular restaurants: places being empty during busy times of day, a lack of repeat customers, strange locations, etc., but when you're new to Taiwan it's hard to read the writing on the wall.
3. The Most Recent Instance
My most recent bout of food poisoning occurred about a week ago, after visiting a Japanese restaurant in Hengchun. The ironic thing about this instance was that I was actually eating my wife's meal. She had ordered a bowl of pork and rice topped with an egg, while I had ordered a bowl of beef and rice without an egg. She mistakenly started eating my order, while I, thinking little of it at the time, ate hers. As you've probably guessed, it was the egg that did me in. It was a very runny egg, the kind of egg I've eaten with Vietnamese food many times without issue, but this time my stomach wasn't having it.
Let me tell you, salmonellosis is not your friend. I spent over six hours the following morning either vomiting or shitting myself into a stupor. It was the kind of sickness where you enter the bathroom and aren't sure whether to sit down or stand up. In between bouts of vomiting and shitting chills would work their way up and down my body, leaving me weak and slightly disoriented.
As she left for her job the following morning my wife asked if she should take me to the emergency room. I declined, thinking the worst was over. Thankfully I was right, but it took me several days to fully recuperate, and I'll be very careful of runny eggs in the future.
It was, all in all, worse that recent battles with covid-19. Covid at least left me with an appetite, and never made me vomit. With Covid I wasn't feeling great, but at least I was able to do things. Salmonellosis kind of put me on sleep mode for a day or so. I was unable to do much aside from sleep and drink cold water.
4. Conclusion
So yeah, those are my experiences with food poisoning in Taiwan. All I can say is be careful what you eat, be mindful of where you eat it, and put some thought into where the food you eat comes from.
This said, it's not usually obvious which restaurants, food stalls or food sellers are going to be a problem. I've eaten in restaurants that looked DISGUSTING and had no problem, just as I've eaten in places that most people would consider "safe" and had major consequences. The Japanese restaurant where I had the egg, for instance, looked relatively clean and professionally run.
Obviously fried food stalls are something to be careful of. I don't THINK "gutter oil" is as much of a problem in Taiwan as it is in China, but aside from that there's also the question of how long their food has been sitting there, how long they've been using the oil they have, and where they get the food they're frying. In this case "following the crowds" can be a good idea. If a place isn't popular with locals there's probably be a good reason for that.
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