7 Healthiest And 7 Unhealthiest Items On The Texas Roadhouse Menu

When you think of Texas Roadhouse, you probably don't exactly think "healthy" and "nutritious," but that doesn't mean a visit to this steakhouse chain is out of the question for those watching their calories, sodium, fat, carbs, or sugar levels (or all of the above). As is the case with most chains, and even with steakhouses in general, the Texas Roadhouse menu is a mix of nutritionally suitable and over-the-top indulgent. You can go all out and consume more calories or sodium than you'd need in an entire day, or you can stick to more rigid health goals. 

Need a little help navigating your options? Here are seven of the healthiest and seven of the unhealthiest items on the Texas Roadhouse menu, with a look at every category, so you can plot out a full meal based on your health goals — yes, you can still have a steak and, no, you're not just going to be limited to a sad side salad.

Texas Roadhouse is known for its Red Chili, and if you're looking for a tasty way to start your meal off right (both nutritionally and flavor-wise), you can't go wrong with this menu item. Easily one of the healthier app options, the chili — supposedly made from scratch and, if you so choose, topped with onions and cheese — contains just 210 calories, 640 milligrams of sodium, and 16 grams of protein, when ordered in a cup size.

One potential reason why Texas Roadhouse Red Chili is so delicious? According to a prior employee who dished all the Texas Roadhouse tea on Reddit, the chili is made with the restaurant's USDA Choice steak. When the team hand cuts the steaks, like filet, sirloin, and ribeye, the trimmings and extras go into the chili. There's nothing wrong with these trimmings, but otherwise they'd go to waste. And if you're not worried about your health whatsoever, this employee had another good piece of intel: You can actually order the chili on a Cactus Blossom, for a chili-cheese take on the deep-fried onion appetizer. That's a Texas Roadhouse ordering hack you'll definitely want to try.

And that brings us to the unhealthiest appetizer on the Texas Roadhouse menu: the Cactus Blossom. The Cactus Blossom is basically the Texas Roadhouse equivalent of an Outback Steakhouse Bloomin' Onion, and consists of a large deep-fried onion served with a Cajun dipping sauce. As is the case with most deep-fried foods, the Cactus Blossom isn't quite something you'd want to eat every single day.

When you order this app, you'll also be getting 2,250 calories, 135 grams of fat, 36 grams of sugar, and an eye-watering 5,000 milligrams of sodium. When you consider the recommended daily caloric intake for the average person is 2,000 calories per day, and that the American Heart Association recommends you aim to eat no more than 1,500 milligrams of sodium per day, this might be an appetizer that you only order once in a blue moon or share (if you do order it, consider upgrading your Cactus Blossom by adding cheese, sauteed onions, mushrooms, or jalapeños on top). And if you don't think that 36 grams of sugar sounds like a lot, consider that a teaspoon of sugar is about 4 grams — making the Cactus Blossom's 36 grams the equivalent of nine teaspoons of sugar.

When watching your health, a house salad is generally a good choice, even if it does land among the top dishes chefs never order at restaurants, due to the way that many eateries simply use it as a way to repurpose leftover ingredients. Let's hope that's not the case at Texas Roadhouse.

The Texas Roadhouse House Salad contains a bed of greens topped with cheese, tomato, eggs, and croutons. It contains just 230 calories, 290 milligrams of sodium, 16 grams of fat, and 4 grams of sugar. In contrast, the plain Caesar Salad, which is also often a go-to pick for those keeping an eye on their nutrition goals, has nearly double the amount of calories and sodium, while containing less than half the amount of protein. On that note, if your main goal is upping the amount of protein you eat, then choose the grilled salmon salad, as it contains 66 grams of protein.

Not all salads are created equal and, in some cases, restaurant salads can actually be far less healthful than other, non-salad menu items. Often over-topped, extravagant salads slathered in heavy dressings hide a lot of fat and sodium between their leaves.

The Steakhouse Filet Salad at Texas Roadhouse is certainly not the worst thing you could order overall at the restaurant, but it's definitely the least healthy of your salad options. With 1,340 calories, 103 grams of fat, and 2,870 milligrams of sodium, it puts you well on your way to achieving your recommended caloric intake for the day, and well-exceeds your recommended sodium intake. One ingredient that might be to blame for the high sodium? The bleu cheese crumbles and bleu cheese salad dressing.

The only good thing in this salad's favor? The 71 grams of protein, but if it's protein you're after, you're much better off going with the high-protein salmon salad, which has fewer calories, nearly half the amount of fat, and less than half the amount of sodium.

Texas Roadhouse puts its steaks front and center. As soon as you walk in the door, you see that big, illuminated case of raw cuts and steak is the highlight of the menu. All of the restaurant's steaks are USDA Choice, too, which means they carry the second-highest grade that a steak can get from the USDA. The individual steak options are vast, ranging from prime rib and porterhouse, to New York strip and filet medallions. However, if you're looking for your healthiest options, opt for a USDA Choice Sirloin Steak.

If you go for the 6-ounce Sirloin Steak, it'll come with only 250 calories and 560 milligrams of sodium, plus 46 grams of protein. If you want to go larger, an 8-ounce sirloin is still pretty reasonable, at 340 calories and 740 milligrams of sodium. After that, you do get into much higher amounts of sodium, with the 11-ounce and 16-ounce sirloin steaks containing 1,020 and 1,490 milligrams of sodium, respectively.

The Filet Medallions at Texas Roadhouse might, at first glance, seem like a good idea. They're certainly not the largest steak that you could get, as each medallion is 3 ounces, and you get three to an order. Accordingly, they're not even that high in calories, with 760 per serving. However, where the Filet Medallions sneak up on you is in the sodium department, with each serving doling out 2,510 milligrams of the salty stuff — more than any other traditional steak on the regular menu.

Maybe, though, you don't really care about sodium, but you're watching out for calories. In that case, the highest-calorie steak on the menu is the Bone-In Ribeye, which contains 1,480 calories, 44 grams of fat, and 1,720 milligrams of sodium.

Watching your wallet rather than your waistline? You can get a cheaper steak dinner at Texas Roadhouse by ordering off the children's menu. Andy's Steak is about 6 ounces, but costs less than the 6-ounce sirloin steak on the regular adult menu.

Another healthy steak option on the menu is the Dallas Filet. This type of filet is a Texas Roadhouse specialty rather than a mainstream cut, and the restaurant claims that it's the most tender steak on the menu (some theorize that it might just be filet mignon by another name). Whatever it is, the steak, which comes in both 6-ounce and 8-ounce portions, is a positive pick.

The 6-ounce version counts 270 calories, 720 milligrams of sodium, and 10 grams of fat. If you're feeling hungry, the 8-ounce version isn't terrible either, with its 360 calories, 960 milligrams of sodium, and 13 grams of fat. Some will tell you to order the Filet Medallions instead of the Dallas Filet so you get an extra ounce of steak for less money, but whether or not you do so is going to totally depend on what you value most — saving a few bucks or saving your heart from all the sodium that's in the Filet Medallions.

What if you're not in the mood for a steak? Fair enough. Since beef has been villainized as a fatty, heart health-destroying substance, you decide to go with something lighter. Maybe pork. After all, pork tends to have fewer calories and less fat than beef, and it's generally cheaper. Unfortunately, if you go for the Pork Chops at Texas Roadhouse, you might just find that you should've ordered one of the healthy steak picks instead.

The grilled Bone-In Pork Chop on the menu comes with 920 calories — which isn't horrific, all things considered — but it has 2,880 milligrams of sodium. If you think that's not that big of a deal, because, after all, according to the American Heart Association, the average American eats 3,400 milligrams of sodium per day, consider the various health concerns that come with continued excessive sodium consumption. On a short-term annoying basis, you'll have to deal with bloating, water retention, and weight gain, but in the long-term, it could lead to issues like kidney disease, stomach cancer, and high blood pressure.

Out of all the chicken options on the Texas Roadhouse menu, the healthiest of the bunch is the grilled barbecue chicken. The half-pound chicken breast contains 300 calories, 450 milligrams of sodium, 3.5 grams of fat, and 46 grams of protein. The amount of sugar is a little high, at 15 grams, the equivalent of nearly four teaspoons of sugar, but you could do far worse.

The sugar content is likely a result of the barbecue sauce, which happens to be one of the worst prepared foods you can buy. While it's not generally considered a very sweet food, it typically contains a lot of sugar. Sometimes that sugar comes in the form of high fructose corn syrup (which has its own problems beyond the sugar content, including the fact that it's been linked to fatty liver disease, cardiovascular issues, and more), as is the case at Texas Roadhouse. With that in mind, enjoy your low-calorie, low-fat, high-protein grilled barbecue chicken, but maybe just don't order an extra side of barbecue sauce to go along with it.

A Southern specialty, country fried chicken is made by basically flattening a chicken breast, breading and frying it, and then smothering it in a rich gravy. It's not a healthy dish by nature, though it is quite tasty, and it gets the honor of being the unhealthiest chicken option on Texas Roadhouse's regular menu. With 770 calories, 1,460 grams of sodium, and 44 grams of fat, it outranks even the fried Chicken Critters, as well as the Smothered Chicken, no matter if you cover it with creamy gravy or cheese.

Note that when you order this dish, you get a choice in the gravy — and that gravy's nutritional content could impact which you choose. Texas Roadhouse's Brown Gravy comes with 70 calories and 330 milligrams of sodium per serving, whereas the White Gravy comes with 90 calories and 180 milligrams of sodium. While the difference doesn't seem all that stark, particularly for the calories, if you're watching your sodium, you'll definitely want to go with the latter.

Grilled salmon has gained a reputation as a go-to restaurant order when you're looking for a protein that's on the healthier side, and you can rely on that reputation to stand true the next time you're at Texas Roadhouse. While the chain doesn't offer all that many seafood options, it does serve Grilled Salmon, Grilled Shrimp, and Fried Catfish, and the salmon takes it away as the healthiest in the group.

Each 5-ounce Norwegian salmon filet is topped with lemon pepper butter and comes with 410 calories, 33 grams of fat, and 770 milligrams of sodium, plus 27 grams of protein. An 8 ounce filet is also available, with slightly higher values. Comparatively, the Grilled Shrimp comes with a whopping 4,090 milligrams of sodium — nearly the same amount as the Cactus Blossom. That said, the Cactus Blossom isn't the highest-sodium item on the Texas Roadhouse menu. That honor belongs to the chain's Cheese Fries, which count 5,400 milligrams.

Beef tips are another dish that some professional chefs never order at restaurants, because they say it can simply be a savvy way for restaurants to repurpose unused or scrap ingredients. It's probably safe to assume that's what Texas Roadhouse is doing, as we already know the chain repurposes steak scraps for its chili. However, those are still some high-quality scraps, so you might not be too perturbed. Instead, what should bother you is the fact that Texas Roadhouse's Beef Tips — covered in brown gravy, mushrooms, onions, and sour cream — really pack in the sodium.

You can choose to have your Beef Tips served over Mashed Potatoes or Seasoned Rice. The rice meal is the worst option, with 4,400 milligrams of sodium compared to the 3,300 milligrams of sodium you'll get with the potatoes. Both options hover at around 1,000 calories, 170 milligrams of cholesterol, and 60 grams of fat.

Texas Roadhouse's Country Vegetable Plate allows you to choose four sides to make up a meal. There are 17 sides to choose from, so you have a lot of options, but some are better than others depending on your nutritional goals. For example, the lowest-calorie options include the Green Beans (100), Applesauce (110), Sauteed Mushrooms (120), and Sauteed Onions (150). The lowest fat options are the Applesauce (0 grams), Green Beans (3.5 g), Bread (8 g), Buttered Corn, and Sweet Potato (both 9 g). The lowest sodium options are the Applesauce (15 milligrams), Sweet Potato (105 mg), Bread (200 mg), and the House Side Salad (290 mg).

As you can see, there's a bit of overlap so you can easily cobble together a Country Vegetable Plate that's low calorie, low fat, and low sodium. Just note that if you're opting for this meal because you think it's an easy way to put together a vegetarian entree, you should check with your server about what's really vegetarian or not, as some veggie sides, like the green beans, contain meat.

When it comes time to order dessert, Texas Roadhouse has three options: Granny's Apple Classic, Strawberry Cheesecake, and a Brownie. Granny's Apple Classic is just apple pie by another name, topped with Vanilla Ice Cream and a Honey Cinnamon Caramel Sauce, making it high in calories, sodium, and sugar. At 1,110 calories, it's just about neck-and-neck with the Brownie (which has 1,200 calories), but the Apple Classic has 970 milligrams of sodium compared to the Brownie's 740 milligrams. Additionally, the Apple Classic has 97 grams of sugar, which works out to about 24 teaspoons of sugar per serving.

As far as desserts go, you're best off getting the Strawberry Cheesecake, which has the fewest calories, least sodium, and least sugar (if more fat than the brownie). That said, it's still packing in 60 grams of sugar, which hardly makes the cheesecake suitable for a low-sugar diet.