Squid and shrimp top the list of high-cholesterol seafood, with squid containing roughly 231 mg per 100-gram serving and shrimp close behind at 147 mg. Most other shellfish fall well below those numbers. The good news: dietary cholesterol from seafood doesn’t affect your heart health the way most people assume.
Cholesterol Levels Across Common Shellfish
Not all seafood is created equal when it comes to cholesterol. The differences are dramatic. Here’s how common shellfish compare, based on data from Washington Sea Grant (all values per 100 grams of edible meat):
- Squid (calamari): 231 mg
- Shrimp: 147 mg
- Dungeness crab: 72 mg
- Pacific oysters: 48 mg
- Bay scallops: 37 mg
- Blue mussels: 37 mg
- Manila clams: 36 mg
- Sea scallops: 27 mg
A standard restaurant portion of calamari or shrimp is around 85 to 115 grams, so a plate of fried calamari could deliver close to 250 mg of cholesterol on its own. Meanwhile, a generous serving of scallops or mussels barely registers. If you’re tracking cholesterol intake specifically, the type of shellfish you choose matters far more than whether you eat shellfish at all.
Fin fish like salmon, cod, and tilapia contain much less cholesterol, typically in the 50 to 70 mg range per serving. Shellfish, especially shrimp and squid, are the outliers in the seafood world.
Why High-Cholesterol Seafood Isn’t the Problem It Seems
For years, dietary cholesterol was treated as a major heart risk. That thinking has shifted substantially. The American Heart Association’s 2026 dietary guidance states that dietary cholesterol “is no longer a primary target for cardiovascular disease risk reduction for most people.” Heart-healthy eating patterns tend to be low in cholesterol not because cholesterol itself is the villain, but because the foods highest in it (fatty meats, processed breakfast meats) come packaged with saturated fat and other concerns. Seafood is a different story.
A clinical trial at Rockefeller University tested this directly. Eighteen healthy adults spent nine weeks rotating through three diets: a low-fat baseline, the same diet plus shrimp, and the same diet plus eggs. Both the shrimp and egg diets raised LDL (“bad”) cholesterol by similar amounts, around 7 to 10 percent. But the shrimp diet increased HDL (“good”) cholesterol by 12.1 percent, compared to 7.6 percent with eggs. Shrimp also significantly lowered triglycerides compared to both the baseline and egg diets. The overall ratio of total cholesterol to HDL cholesterol, a more meaningful marker for heart risk, was better on the shrimp diet than the egg diet.
Omega-3s Offset the Cholesterol Picture
The same shellfish that carry more cholesterol also deliver meaningful amounts of omega-3 fatty acids, the type linked to lower inflammation and better heart health. Shrimp provides about 0.5 grams of EPA and DHA (the two omega-3s your body actually uses) per 100 grams. Alaskan king crab and spiny lobster each deliver around 0.4 grams. Even blue crab, canned, hits 0.4 grams.
Clams are the exception, with only about 0.1 grams of combined EPA and DHA per serving. But clams also have very little cholesterol (36 mg), so they’re not really in the “high cholesterol seafood” conversation to begin with.
This omega-3 content likely explains the triglyceride-lowering effect seen in the Rockefeller shrimp study. The researchers noted that the slightly higher omega-3 content in the shrimp diet could account for both the lower triglycerides and the greater boost to HDL cholesterol. In other words, the nutrients that come alongside the cholesterol in shellfish actively work in your favor.
How Cooking Changes Things
The cholesterol in a piece of shrimp or squid doesn’t change much based on how you cook it. What does change is the formation of cholesterol oxidation products, which are modified forms of cholesterol that may be more harmful to blood vessels than cholesterol itself.
Research published in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry tested several cooking methods on fish and found that all heating methods increased these oxidation products. Interestingly, steaming produced the highest levels, mainly because the longer cooking time (12 minutes versus 6 minutes for pan-frying) meant more heat exposure. Pan-frying with or without oil produced similar results, and the type of frying oil didn’t make a significant difference either. The omega-3 content survived all cooking methods intact, with no measurable loss of these beneficial fats.
The practical takeaway: quick cooking at moderate heat is better than prolonged steaming if you want to minimize oxidation. But the differences are small enough that your cooking method matters far less than your overall eating pattern. A plate of grilled shrimp with vegetables is a heart-friendly meal regardless of the cholesterol number on the shrimp.
Putting the Numbers in Context
The old guideline of 300 mg of dietary cholesterol per day is no longer an official cap. Current guidance focuses on overall dietary patterns rather than a single nutrient. That said, if you eat a large shrimp cocktail (about 12 large shrimp, roughly 150 grams), you’re taking in around 220 mg of cholesterol. A plate of calamari could push past 250 mg easily. These aren’t dangerous numbers, but they’re worth knowing if your doctor has specifically asked you to limit cholesterol due to a condition like familial hypercholesterolemia.
For most people, the more important factor is what you eat alongside or instead of that seafood. Shrimp is very low in saturated fat (under 0.3 grams per serving), which has a much larger effect on your blood cholesterol than dietary cholesterol does. Squid is similarly lean. Compare that to a ribeye steak, which delivers both cholesterol and a heavy dose of saturated fat, and the difference in heart impact becomes clear. High-cholesterol seafood sits in a genuinely different nutritional category than high-cholesterol red meat.