BATON ROUGE, La. — With locals reveling in the midst of mudbug season, the Louisiana Department of Health gave crawfish lovers another reason to pile on the plates during the Bayou State's annual Crawfish Awareness Month.
In a social media post published on Friday, LDH touted the health benefits of consuming crawfish, which includes numerous nutritional components such as essential vitamins and minerals – aside from being an obvious source of protein.
"You heard it here, folks!," LDH heralded on social media. "Crawfish boils can be GOOD for you. Crawfish are high protein, low fat and have tons of health benefits. Just throw in extra veggies and DON’T overdo it with the sodium."
LDH's list of nutritional benefits includes:
- Omega-3 fatty acids – helps with autoimmune disease
- Magnesium – healthy muscles, nerves, bones and blood sugar
- Iron – energy, cognitive function, immune system
- Phosphorous – growth, bones and teeth
- Niacin (Vitamin B3) – cardiovascular health
- Zinc – immune health, inflammation
Longtime WWL Louisiana Health & Fitness expert and author Mackie Shilstone agrees with the LDH regarding the nutritional benefits of crawfish.
The other of six books on wellness says whether it's someone who decides to be on a high-protein intake, like a Keto-friendly diet, or a Mediterranean eating plan, where a person wants to emphasize seafood and reduce your incidence of eating red meat and emphasize more vegetables – crawfish are an excellent addition to the menu.
"Crawfish can work right into those types of healthy eating plants," said Shilstone. "First of all, 5/8 of a cup – that's 75 calories – you're you're getting 16 grams of protein. And that can compete very highly with one cup of yogurt. In fact, that's typically 11 grams, where are you getting 16 grams in 5/8 of a cup of cooked crawfish."
"The other thing is that you're getting almost no fat, very low fat, you're getting almost no saturated fat, no carbohydrates."
One concern, as the state health department pointed out, is being mindful of the amounts of sodium.
"Just the 5/8 of a cup of crawfish itself is 170 milligrams of sodium," explained Shilstone. "Those of you on a sodium-restricted diet – usually less than 2,200 milligrams – and those of you with high blood pressure that may need to go below 1,500 milligrams a day, 170 calories can fit right into, so to speak, generalized a 2,000 calorie meal plan."
WWL Louisiana chief medical correspondent Dr. Corey Hebert backs Shilstone saying moderation is key when factoring in all the accompanying calories, carbs and sodium often consumed during a crawfish feast.
"Anything in its purest form can be healthy, but in general in New Orleans, we never go to a crawfish boil and don’t eat tons of carbs, drink tons of alcohol and eat a lot of fatty foods," Dr. Hebert explained. "Boiled crawfish (the way we like to eat them) are very high and sodium and also high in fat so you need to be careful whenever you start to imbibe in our beloved mudbugs!"
And while shellfish can be a source of cholesterol, 5/8s of a cup of crawfish is approximately 126mg, which Shilstone says is below the threshold of 300mg in a day set by the American Heart Association, National Institute of Health.
Crawfish can typically be harvested anytime from January to June, with prime season running in the spring from March to May.
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