Did Taiwan not get the memo several decades back that leaving food out can have bad health repressions? Locals are so wild about good oil (for a good reason), but seem to ignore other important - even basic - health concepts such as this. Even meat and fish just bathing under the sun for hours and hours.
Or am I missing a scientific update? 
Loads of products here are preserved quite heavily. Iām not defending the practice of poor food hygiene, but Taiwan has gone heavily in the direction of chemicals in our food to preserve them.
Iām sure the FDA is well aware of whatās going on and all the stomach cancers and other definitely not food related diseases have no connections 
I actually feel quite astonished how little the ahits happen in Taiwan in recent years. but I do worry about why that may be. the actual food handling hasnt improved THAT much, even though it is absolutely improving.
interestingly, there is a sect if the population here that is fairly against raw vegetables. even the vegans and vegetarians. worried about ecoli and the like. I have to waste a lot of time accommodating such people that are against fresh food because its dirty. but the cooked stuff sitting in sauce for hours in summer is ok because its cooked, thus clean.
there is a person for every idiocy. just ignore and move on lots of options available.
That food is protected by an umbrella bug net. Totally fine to leave it on the table for hours.
This is baffling to me too. Lot of articles on web say you should refrigerate food asap or bacteria will start to grow. I see lot of bento places have their food cooked by 4:30 and will sit there until they close or is sold out which would be 4 hours later. How people donāt get sick eating food that has been sitting out for that long surprises me.
you are talking several decades only, ignoring 5000 years of äøä¹¾äøę·Øåäŗę²ē
Yea lots of articles says a lot of thing, and only like 7-11 will ever follow themā¦
But even lunchboxes are chilled to about 18C and kept that way for about a day or so, same with rice balls. I think refrigerating them turns the rice hard and grainy until you cook it again, so itās kept at that temperature.
The food isnāt actually left there for hours. You canāt fit four hoursā worth of cabbage in one plate. They are constantly replenishing it with freshly cooked batches as they run out. Besides, the food is usually kept on a heated platform.
There are plenty of fast-casual ābiandangā style places in the US, such as Panda Express and Dig Inn. They do the same thing.
I think the rule for buffets (like Chinese buffets, which lunchbox places in the US also operates on similar models) is that the food MUST be kept hot, as in above the upper end of the danger zone (I believe this is above 150F) and may only be kept for 4 hours at most. And those buffet things are kept very HOT in the states, so that food off the buffet line is still piping hot even if it had been there for an hour.
In Taiwan the table they keep the food on is COLD, as in not heated at all. There is a lamp over it but the lamp is not of sufficient wattage to keep it warm.
This is from the food safety certificate I got in Austin (itās required if you work any job that requires you to work with food).
In practice, Iāve seen Chinese buffet restaurants (for what itās worth, this was in northern Europe) where the stuff is put out into large metal serving trays for hours and is allowed to get lukewarm, only slightly above room temperature. When I arrived there in the afternoon or evening, it always looked like the food had been sitting there for several hours since morning. I love a Chinese buffet as much as the next guy, but I never could work up the nerve to try eating there even once (I always ended up eating at the Subway shop that was next door).
In all of honesty though if you are eating at Subway, do not eat the tuna sandwich.
Is worst at houses. I have seen soup out and reheating for days. Leftovers on the fridge for ever. Thawing meat on the sink.
If you are thawing meat in the sink you leave it sitting in a pot of room temperature water, it will thaw in about 15 minutes.
The problem is people leave it there for longer.
I always thaw the day before in the fridge.
Soups are actually ok if they are constantly heated. The heating keeps it from spoiling. There were āforever stewsā out there where they just kept adding ingredients and the heat is kept on continuously, for years if need be, adding water and ingredient as need dictates.
NRA standard is minimun 135 F.
Still looking to find a safe process and formula to ferment stinky tofu.
Iām sure you can read about fermentation but Iām not sure danger zone is relevant when it comes to fermentation.
For example if you are proofing/rising bread dough you are keeping it in the danger zone for about 2 hours, because fermentation has to happen in the danger zone.
I managed a kitchen in the US in college, and the rule we used was 40F - 140F no more than 4 hours. So hot food cannot go under 140F and cold food cannot go above 40F for than four hours.
You bring up a good example where cultured yeast has an expected behavior, producing a predetermined result.
In the case of food product stored within the TDZ beyond the recommended time period, the potential for pathogenic growth to levels beyond safe consumption may occur, depending on the item.
Stinky tofu is an anomaly. There are also US standards for cheese imports, yet a reblochon is perfectly consumed, but denied its US visa based on regulation.
They bounce these numbers around. It is currently 41 to 135. That may change in a month though.
Itās not really relevant here (within reason), like with other fermented foods.
The fermentation is done under conditions (high salt concentration and essentially anaerobic because of the brine) where most harmful/unpalatable things canāt grow, and pretty much the only thing that can is mostly harmless/beneficial lactic acid bacteria, which also decrease the pH to further inhibit the growth of other stuff. (In the specific case of stinky tofu it seems to becomes alkaline later, apparently because of Bacillus species taking over in the late stages of fermentation, but thatās an exception.)
Bread as mentioned by TL isnāt very relevant here either, because the fermentation times are way too short for it to be much of an issue (at least for commercial-yeast-based bread, sourdough is a bit different and can need a bit longer).
If you ferment bread dough for a day or two at room temperature, colonization with other stuff is going to be an issue (and after a few hours the dough will be overfermented and not worth baking anyway). Itās just that the process relies on adding enough yeast to outcompete anything else on a short timescale.
It probably depends also on the ability of the food item to support the growth of pathogenic microorganisms, and the presence of such organisms there in the first place (unavoidable in the case of meat, for example, because itās a dead animal, and it also contains microorganisms able to infect humans - youāre unlikely to get sick from things adapted to live on plants). Itās quite okay to just mix flour, water, and a minimal amount of yeast and leave it sitting around for a day or two (like when making bread preferments such as polish) - I guess that flour doesnāt have enough accessible nutrients to support most kinds of microorganisms pathogenic to humans, even if they were there in the first place, which theyāre not.
Thank you for your input on this. Although I have probably crossed the boundary the OP set, you have brought up some guidance to tofu fermentation that may be helpful.
On a side note:
This is tried and true. The reliance on airborne yeasts produce unpredictable results, yet was the standard spanning millennia. 
And a cool article: