Best & Worst Seafood Dishes in America

When you think seafood, you think “healthy,” right? But because the restaurant chains are fishing for profits, first, their seafood can be your most dangerous catch.

Here’s why: Cooking fish can be a little tricky for home cooks, so people like to order it when they go out. Hey, it’s the healthiest thing on the menu, right? Protein, Omega 3s, lemon juice—bring the whole platter! So Lobster Bib, Inc., can charge a premium price when they load a trash-fish fillet with fat-soaked bread crumbs, throw it into a cauldron of bubbling fat, top it with molten cheese and maybe a little cream sauce, and grease its path to your table. Cue the theme music from Jaws: Something deadly is about to rear up from the deep. Only this time, you’re the one who’s swallowing a whopper—seafood’s often-undeserved reputation as a safe pick on the menu. It’s anything but.

As the guy who wrote Eat This, Not That!, I don’t want to ruin a nice meal out for you. There are a lot of great seafood dishes on the menu at even the fishiest of joints. But I don’t want you taken—pardon the cliché—hook, line, and sinker by good entrees gone bad. The average American eats more than 16 pounds of seafood and shellfish a year. Order the right fish—usually they’ll be broiled or poached—and it’s a health boon. Catch the wrong ones, and you’re sunk: Adding pounds of extra weight when you think you’re eating healthy.

So here’s a roundup of the most dangerous fish in an ocean of better possibilities. Truth is, seafood has the potential to be among the healthiest meals you eat—low in fat, high in protein, and brimming with heart-healthy, brain-boosting omega-3 fats. And that’s why, in addition to the seven most horrendous seafood entrees in the country, we’ve also provided their healthier alternatives. Start here and you’ll soon be able to distinguish between a lean fish and a nutritional flounder.

#7: WORST SEAFOOD SALAD
California Pizza Kitchen’s Field Greens Salad with Sautéed Salmon
1,227 calories
15 g saturated fat
952 mg sodium

The menu touts this mound of oily produce as a blend of field greens, pears, and candied walnuts topped with salmon and Dijon balsamic vinaigrette. Sounds about perfect, right? But like nearly all of CPK’s salads, this thing harbors a furtive load of fat. CPK doesn’t provide the total fat count, but we do know that this salad packs in 75 percent of your day’s allotment of saturated fat. That’s more than you’d get if you ordered a Baconator cheeseburger at Wendy’s.

Eat This Instead!
Caesar Salad with Grilled Shrimp
649 calories
14 g saturated
1,338 mg sodium

Bonus Tip: We’ve also uncovered the nation’s worst chicken entrees, and you can find them all right here. (Some have more than 2500 calories and days' worth of saturated fat!)

#6: WORST PASTA
Applebee’s Grilled Shrimp Pesto Alfredo Fettuccino
1,600 calories

Applebee’s has made it a policy to withhold nutritional numbers from its patrons, but thanks to legislation coming from progressive jurisdictions, the restaurant has been forced to cough up a few unflattering digits. That’s how we discovered this unhealthy bomb, a plate of shrimp and noodles blanketed under so much fatty Alfredo sauce that it manages to squeeze 80 percent of your day’s energy requirements onto one plate. Don’t blame the shrimp though—the curly crustaceans are actually one of the leanest forms of protein you’ll find. The key is to make sure you’re not fishing it from a sea of butter and cream.

Eat This Instead!
Applebee's Spicy Shrimp Diavolo
500 calories

#5: WORST NON-SALMON FILLET
Romano's Macaroni Grill Parmesan-Crusted Sole (dinner)
1,710 calories
28 g saturated fat
3,360 mg sodium

Before it receives the Romano treatment, sole remains a nutritionally reliable standby. Red Lobster, for instance, sells an entrée that comes with a full fillet of sole with vegetable side at under 300 calories. So what’s the problem here? Oily breading, greasy rice, and a viscous butter sauce that helps give this thing as much saturated fat as seven Chocolate Frosted Cake Donuts from Dunkin Donuts. And as if that weren't enough, the dish has 150 percent of your day’s sodium intake. (Maybe they just forgot to wash off the salt water.) To the restaurant's credit, they've recently overhauled their menu, thanks to a new CEO, and now it boasts one of the healthier menus in the restaurant world.

Eat This Instead!
Lobster Ravioli
520 calories
17 g saturated fat
1,220 mg sodium

#4: WORST SEAFOOD SANDWICH
Quizno’s Large Tuna Melt
1,740 calories
135 g fat (27 g saturated)
1,940 mg sodium

No sandwich receives more abuse than tuna salad. For some reason, sandwich shops just don’t think you’ll eat the tuna if they don’t churn it in a bucket of mayonnaise. Or maybe they just like the fact that mayo costs less than fish. Either way, it’s your health on the line, so you have every reason to be upset. Selling a sandwich with this much fat ought to require a warning label.

Eat This Instead!
Tuna Melt Bullet
525 calories
36.5 g fat (7 g saturated)
690 mg sodium

Bonus Tip: Think this is bad? Check out the sorry state of some sandwiches with this must-have list of the 30 Worst Sandwiches in America--along with much healthier options for each.

#3: WORST SALMON FILLET
Cheesecake Factory’s Miso Salmon
1,757 calories
40 g saturated fat
2,748 mg sodium

Cheesecake Factory has a reputation for turning good meals into nutritional nightmares, and few entrees make that point more clearly than this one. Honestly—a piece of salmon with as much saturated fat as an adult should eat in two full days? (You’d be better off trying to eat a live piranha.) Go with the Simply Grilled Salmon instead—it’s one of the best items on Cheesecake Factory’s menu.

Eat This Instead!
Simply Grilled Salmon with Green Beans and Broccoli
710 calories
13 g saturated fat
787 mg sodium

#2: WORST FISH & CHIPS
Cheesecake Factory’s Beer-Battered Fish & Chips
1,817 calories
23 g saturated fat
3,232 mg sodium

This makes two for Cheesecake Factory, only at least this entrée looks the part. That said, we haven’t seen another fish and chips entrée with even close to this many calories. The problem is that fat is the common nutrient uniting everything on this plate. The cod is blanketed with fatty breading, the fries suffer the same fate, and both the coleslaw and tartar sauce are built around a gooey base of mayonnaise. This positions this fish in the middle of a sea of beige and white foods, and that’s often a terrible sign.

Eat This Instead!
Cheesecake Factory’s Simply Grilled Mahi Mahi with Broccoli and Green Beans
517 calories
9 g saturated fat
844 mg sodium

Bonus Tip: Sign up to follow me on Twitter. I'll let you know when I come across new gut-busting dishes, so you can run the other way, and offer you life-changing health and nutrition secrets that you can apply to your life immediately! (For example, did you know switching from white bread to whole grain helps you lose twice the belly fat, according to a new Penn State study?)

#1: WORST SEAFOOD DISH IN AMERICA
Baja Fresh Breaded Fish Nachos
2,090 calories
116 g fat (41 g saturated, 4.5 g trans)
2,740 mg sodium

Granted, nobody expects nachos to make a lean meal, especially not when the meat on top is breaded. But would you really expect Baja Fresh to serve you something with more fat, sodium, and calories than you should eat in an entire day? Plus more than two days' worth of artery-clogging trans fat? Stick with the tacos instead. You can eat until you’re stuffed and still not get close the abysmal numbers in these nachos.

Eat This Instead!
American Mahi Mahi Soft Tacos (2)
480 calories
20 g fat (9 g saturated)
980 mg sodium
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Courtesy of David Zinczenko, with Matt Goulding-"Eat This, Not That"