Lessons on Food Safety from Taiwan in the 70s
With all the recent reports of Salmonella and other foodborne outbreaks, I told Jerry – my ex – that maybe we ought to start washing our produce the way we did when we lived in Taiwan.
My brain had reached back more than fifty years and pulled out an old solution to a very current concern.
The solution, it turns out, should stay in the past.
But the memory is worth keeping.
Then: Taiwan in the 1970s
When I lived in Taiwan as an Air Force wife, we couldn’t simply turn on the kitchen faucet, fill the glass with water, and drink it. Since we lived off base, Jerry had to haul our drinking water from Ching Chuan Kang Air Base (CCK) or boil it before we drank it.
So boiled or hauled water was treasured water.
You didn’t casually pour it down the drain. You boiled it, cooled it, stored it, and used it for the things that mattered.
Fresh produce presented another problem. We had been warned that locally grown fruits and vegetables could carry organisms that could make us sick. Traditional farming practices included the use of natural fertilizers, including “night soil”—human waste used to fertilize crops.
Anything we intended to eat raw therefore required special treatment.
I remember washing produce in a carefully prepared bleach-water solution. Depending on what we were doing, that precious boiled water might also come into play.
It sounds rather alarming when I write about it now, but I don’t remember being particularly alarmed at the time. Those were simply the rules.
Living overseas as a military family meant learning that things you took for granted in the United States might not work the same way somewhere else. You learned the local precautions, incorporated them into everyday life, and got on with things.
Now: A Familiar Problem Returns
Fast-forward more than fifty years.
Now I’m hearing reports of Salmonella, E. coli, Listeria, and other foodborne illnesses associated with foods sold right here in the United States.
That’s what made me think of Taiwan.
I wasn’t standing in the kitchen nostalgically remembering bleach water. I was remembering a practical lesson: produce can carry organisms that you cannot see, smell, or taste.
And somewhere in my mental filing cabinet was an old instruction:
We know how to deal with that. We did it in Taiwan.
So I told Jerry we should use the old bleach-water routine.
Except we shouldn’t.
Today’s food-safety recommendations specifically say not to wash fruits and vegetables with bleach, disinfectants, soap, or detergent. Instead, fresh produce should be thoroughly rinsed under clean running water, rubbing the surface with your hands and using a clean produce brush for firm items when appropriate. Washing can reduce bacteria on produce, although it cannot necessarily eliminate all of it.
In other words, my concern was reasonable. But my solution was fifty years out of date.
The Part I Want to Remember
That’s what fascinates me about this little episode.
We spend a lifetime accumulating useful information. Some of it becomes so deeply embedded that we don’t consciously remember learning it. Then something happens and—click—the old file opens.
But knowledge has a context.
The bleach-water routine made sense for an American military family living under particular conditions in Taiwan in the 1970s. It doesn’t follow that I should pull out the Clorox because I hear about a Salmonella outbreak in 2026.
The underlying lesson, however, survived perfectly well:
Pay attention to where your food comes from. Take contamination seriously. Follow the best information available to you.
And occasionally check the date on the information stored in your head.
Apparently, some of mine has been sitting there since Taiwan.
Right next to the reminder:
Don’t waste the boiled water.
