RF Ep #3 Is your lobster fake? 5 ways to tell if your food is real…

RF Ep #3
Is your lobster fake? 5 ways to tell if your food is real…

Don’t get cheated! Follow these five tips to make sure you get real lobster every time.

By Tracy Saelinger
Before you drop big bucks on a fancy lobster dinner this Valentine's Day weekend, you may want to brush up on a little marine biology and check out our tips for how to make sure you're getting a real lobster.

Inside Edition recently released a report accusing several restaurants across the country of using cheap seafood substitutes in so-called lobster dishes. Dishes from 28 restaurants were sent to labs for DNA testing; 35 percent of samples indicated cheap fish substitutes like whiting and haddock.

For example, a test of the Lobster Salad Roll at Nathan's in Coney Island, Brooklyn, indicated that the meat was whiting, an inexpensive fish. A group that spoke on behalf of the restaurant told Inside Edition that the recipe is a seafood mix that includes lobster and whiting. Another test of a lobster ravioli from a restaurant in New York's Little Italy found only cheese with no lobster present; the manager did not wish to comment to the show.

When the lobster bisque from Red Lobster was analyzed, Inside Edition reports that two out of three cups of the chain's Lobster Bisque contained a mixture of lobster and langostino, and one contained only langostino. The Inside Edition exposé online reads, "One sample included only langostino, a less expensive seafood more closely related to hermit crab than lobster..." Not exactly true: langostino is a type of lobster, confirms Bob Bayer, executive director of the Lobster Institute and professor at the University of Maine.

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