Red Lobster serves most calorie-heavy meal in America

Red Lobster serves up the most gut-busting, calorie-heavy meal among all major chain restaurants in America, a food-industry watchdog group said Wednesday.

This year’s “winner” of the “Xtreme Eating Awards” by the Center for Science in the Public Interest was the seafood giant’s “Create Your Own Combination,” which could deliver as many as 2,710 calories.

A calorie-craving dinner guest would have to pick the combination of Parrot Isle Jumbo Coconut Shrimp, Walt’s Favorite Shrimp and the Shrimp Linguine Alfredo to go along with a Caesar salad, French fries and a Cheddar Bay biscuit to get the heaviest meal possible.

The advocacy group said this Red Lobster combo would be equivalent to a KFC meal of eight pieces of Original Recipe, four sides of mashed potatoes with gravy, four pieces of corn on the cob and eight packets of butter spread.

The group’s registered dietitian, Paige Einstein, called Red Lobster’s offering a “nutritional shipwreck.”

It “exemplifies the kind of gargantuan restaurant meal that promotes obesity, diabetes and other diet-related diseases,” Einstein said. “Abnormal is the new normal.”

A Red Lobster rep said customers would need to go radically out of their way to pick that high-calorie combo.

One of the 500 possible combinations could be as little as 620 calories, according to company spokeswoman Erica Ettori.

The Xtreme Eating Awards focus on “just one atypical combination and as a result inaccurately portrays the nature of this menu item,” Ettori said.

The other lowlights of this year’s list included IHOP’s Chorizo Fiesta Omelette (1,990 calories), Dickey’s Barbecue Pit’s 3 Meat Plate (2,500 calories), a Sonic’s Pineapple Upside Down Master Blast (2,020 calories) and Steak ’N Shake’s 7×7 Steakburger ‘n Fries (1,570 calories).

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