How to Eat Healthy in Taiwan Without Missing the Good Food

Updated August 2026. Taiwan is one of my favourite places to eat, which is exactly why living there creates a different problem from visiting for a week. I can happily spend a holiday eating fried chicken, beef noodles, gua bao and bubble tea. After a month, I want vegetables, fruit and meals that do not make me need a nap.

The old version of this article made Taiwan sound as though vegetables were almost impossible to find. That was overstated. The real issue is that the foods most visible to a visitor — night-market snacks, breakfast pastries, fried cutlets, noodles and sweet drinks — are not necessarily what I want to eat three times a day.

What I mean by healthy food

I am not trying to turn Taiwanese food into diet food. For us, eating well means getting enough protein, vegetables and fruit, eating mostly normal minimally processed meals, and saving the deep-fried and very sweet stuff for when we actually want it.

The easiest option: buffet-style 自助餐

The most useful everyday meal for us was the Taiwanese self-serve buffet, zìzhùcān (自助餐). You take a plate or box and choose from trays of vegetables, tofu, eggs, fish, meat and rice. It solves the main problem immediately: I can see the food and build the meal myself.

I usually take two or three vegetable dishes, a protein and a smaller amount of rice. Some dishes are oily, so I do not pretend this is a nutrition laboratory. It is simply much easier to assemble a balanced lunch here than at a noodle shop.

Bento shops are another easy everyday meal

Taiwanese bento shops — biàndāng (便當) — are everywhere. A typical box gives you rice, a main protein and several side dishes. Choose grilled, braised or roasted meat when you want something lighter than a fried cutlet, and pick vegetable sides instead of treating the rice as the entire meal.

This is the kind of food I can eat repeatedly without feeling that every lunch is a tourist experience.

Convenience stores are surprisingly useful

7-Eleven and FamilyMart are genuinely useful when I want something predictable. I can put together eggs, unsweetened soy milk, fruit, plain yoghurt, sweet potato, salad, tofu or a simple ready-made meal without resorting to a pastry because it is the only thing open.

The important word for drinks is 無糖 (wútáng): no sugar. Taiwan has excellent tea, but bottled tea and milk drinks span everything from genuinely unsweetened to dessert in a cup.

Fruit is easy to find and worth buying

Taiwan grows excellent fruit. Depending on the season, we bought guava, pineapple, papaya, citrus, watermelon and bananas from markets and fruit shops. A bag of cut fruit also makes a much better emergency snack than arriving at a night market ravenous and eating the first fried thing I see.

Vegetarian food can make eating lighter easier

Taiwan has a long tradition of Buddhist vegetarian food, and vegetarian buffet restaurants are useful even if you eat meat. Search for 素食 (sùshí) or 蔬食 (shūshí). You will often find tofu, greens, mushrooms and vegetable dishes that are much harder to assemble at a snack stall.

Vegetarian does not automatically mean light — plenty of tofu and mock-meat dishes are fried — but the range of vegetables is much better.

What I still eat because I am in Taiwan

I am still eating fried chicken. I am still eating beef noodles, dumplings, gua bao and lu rou fan. The point of living somewhere interesting is not to recreate the food I ate at home.

I just stop making every meal a greatest-hits tour. If lunch is a simple buffet plate and breakfast is eggs, fruit and soy milk, I can eat whatever I want at a night market without turning an occasional indulgence into my entire diet.

Bubble tea: choose the sugar level

One thing I appreciate in Taiwan is that drink shops usually let you choose sweetness and ice. I order less sugar or no sugar when I want tea rather than dessert. Tapioca pearls, brown sugar and cream still change the equation, obviously, so I order them when that is what I actually want.

A simple daily strategy

If I were back in Taipei tomorrow, I would keep breakfast simple, use 自助餐 or a bento shop for many lunches, buy fruit for home, and leave dinner flexible. That gives me enough normal meals that I never have to feel guilty about eating the things Taiwan is famous for.

For everything else about settling in, see our updated guide to living in Taiwan.