Red Lobster is a casual seafood restaurant that is perfect for families and for meeting friends after work. Its menu provides a wide range of options that range from healthy low-calorie and low-sodium meals to extravaganzas that use up several days allotment for calories and sodium. By scrutinizing the menu carefully, diners can find nutritionally sound, tasty meals at Red Lobster.
Appetizers
A glance at its menu shows that Red Lobster offers a wide range of appetizers. If you are trying to maintain a healthy weight, you might choose to indulge in 12 hand-shucked oysters with only 100 calories or shrimp cocktail with 120 calories. Just be careful to steer clear from the crispy calamari and vegetables. At 1,520 calories, this dish is better categorized as an entree, rather than an appetizer.
Entrees
The "Fresh Fish" menu at Red Lobster has a number of very healthy and low-calorie entrees. For starters, the fresh cod and perch both have only 170 calories, with the fresh haddock tailing right behind with 180 calories. If you are trying to avoid high-calorie and high-fat meals, approach the "Specials" menu with caution and steer clear of the steak, lobster and shrimp Oscar that packs in 1,170 calories.
Sodium
Most of the dishes at Red Lobster are very high sodium. A number of them exceed the suggested limitation of 1,500 mg per day set by the American Heart Association. Items appearing on the "Menu Specials" have the highest sodium, ranging from the garlic grilled shrimp that has 900 mg sodium to the seaport lobster and shrimp entree that has 3,860 mg of sodium.
Healthier choices can be found on the "Fresh Fish" menu ,where many entrees, such as the mahi mahi with 270 mg sodium can be found.
Sodium
Relief from the high-calorie entrees is found on Red Lobster's "Lighthouse Menu." Focusing on low-calorie dishes, the Lighthouse Menu presents a hefty lobster 1.25 lb. lobster that has only 45 calories, as well as various half-size fish dishes, a shrimp cocktail and a small assortment of vegetable side dishes. A number of dipping sauces, ranging from the 80-calorie balsamic vinaigrette to the 10-calorie pico de gallo sauces, provide a nice alternative to the high fat butter based dipping sauces usually used with lobster.
Desserts
If you indulge in desserts at Red Lobster, you may want to stick to the New York-style cheesecake with strawberries. With 520 calories, it does the least damage to one's efforts to maintain a healthy weight. By way of comparison, the "Chocolate Wave" comes in with a hefty 1490 calories.
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