44% Of People Consider This Their Favorite Type Of Seafood
A wise man once said, "My bounty is as boundless as the sea, My love as deep; the more I give to thee, The more I have, for both are infinite." That was Shakespeare, folks (via Open Source Shakespeare). Red Lobster's shrimp is, in fact, endless, and seafood brings up some pretty intense feelings in us, including love. So we took it upon ourselves at Mashed to find out just how deeply people love different types of seafood, including lobster, scallops, shrimp, and calamari.
Mashed asked people on the world wide web what their favorite kind of seafood was, and 67,000 people worldwide answered. The results are revealing. Scallops were not popular, despite what Hells' Kitchen would have you think, and came in at a dismal 9 percent as a fan favorite. Next was calamari (10 percent), and "Other" (13 percent), which included anything not on the list. This category ended up encompassing seafood favorites as commonplace as crab, but also fish like Alaskan pollock and mahi-mahi.
What seafood do people love the most?
The queens of the ocean floor, according to survey-takers worldwide, are shrimp with the winning 44 percent of votes. Lobster came in second with 25 percent. There's a reason Red Lobster runs their shrimp deal – people can't get enough of these little critters. These bite-sized creatures are actually the most eaten kind of seafood in America, according to 2018 numbers from the National Fisheries Institute. Americans eat 4.6 pounds of shrimp a year, on average, thanks in part to cheap farm-raised shrimp imported from overseas and fast-casual menu offerings over the last decade or so (via Slate).
But are shrimp actually good for you? It depends. By themselves, Healthline tells us they're actually a low-calorie food that's high in nutrients like iodine – as Pimp C reminded us with the line "We eat so many shrimp I got iodine poisoning" from Three 6 Mafia's "Sippin' on Some Syrup" (via Vice). There are some concerns about their high cholesterol content, but shrimp also deliver Omega-3 fatty acids and antioxidants. The thing is, says Women's Health, eating them breaded and fried kind of defeats the purpose. So shrimp wisely, people.