Light eats for heavy shopping

Mall food won't be a diet buster if you fuel up sensibly

Americans consume on average more than 3,000 calories on Thanksgiving; our stomachs may need a rest on Friday. Hopefully, your Black Friday shopping routine will burn some calories; elbowing other parents out of the way for this year's Wii-equivalent will probably make you break a sweat.

Making healthy eating choices isn't hard. It means doing what you've been told to do all along: Eat a salad. Choose the vegetarian option. Abstain from the cheese and mayo on your sandwich. Don't eat anything fried. Order water instead of soda. And skip the typical shopping indulgence, the saucer-size cookie.

To help you, we offer a list of healthy items at restaurants in or near the Triangle's malls.

P.F. Chang's

Locations: Crabtree Valley Mall and The Streets at Southpoint

One word of caution about eating at this restaurant: Most of the entrees are two to three-and-a-half servings. What could be a healthy portion of the ground chicken and eggplant entree at 187 calories may not be the best choice if you eat the whole thing, which has 677 calories. A smarter idea is to choose one of these four seafood dishes and share it with a shopping buddy or take half home for dinner: Wild Alaskan salmon steamed with ginger (125 calories per serving), Cantonese shrimp (261 calories), Cantonese scallops (297 calories), and Oolong marinated sea bass (291 calories.)

Moe's Southwest Grill

Locations: Cameron Village, Triangle Town Center, Crabtree Valley Mall, Renaissance Center near The Streets at Southpoint, North Hills

Eating healthy here means ordering one taco, a burrito without a tortilla or a salad without the fried salad bowl and abstaining from the chips. The Funk Meister chicken hard shell taco with black beans, cheese, pico and lettuce has only 250 calories. If you choose a soft taco, it adds 30 calories. Ordering a salad or burrito as a streaker means it comes without the fried salad bowl or the tortilla. The Home Wrecker steak streaker with rice, steak, black beans, guacamole, pico and lettuce has 365 calories. The Close Talker salad streaker with steak, black beans, lettuce, pico, grilled veggies, cucumbers and black olives has 345 calories. Of course, you can't go wrong with a salad called the Personal Trainer; without salad dressing or cheese, the grilled vegetable option has 210 calories.

Subway

Locations: Crabtree Valley Mall, Triangle Town Center, Northgate Mall, Cary Towne Center

Jared Fogle has made this chain a healthy-eating destination. You are guaranteed six grams of fat or less if you order any six-inch Jared sandwich on wheat bread with lettuce, tomatoes, onions, green peppers, pickles and olives; that means no cheese or mayo. Those sandwiches include ham (290 calories), oven-roasted chicken breast (310 calories), roast beef (290 calories), Subway club (320 calories), sweet onion chicken teriyaki (370 calories), turkey breast (280 calories), turkey breast and ham (290 calories) and veggie delite (230 calories).

Panera

Locations: Crabtree Valley Mall, The Streets at Southpoint, North Hills

This chain offers low-fat soups, which are a nice way to warm up on a chilly day. The low-fat vegetarian garden vegetable has 150 calories, while the low-fat vegetarian black bean soup has 250 calories. Among the sandwiches, the smoked turkey breast on sourdough bread has 470 calories, and the Mediterranean veggie sandwich on tomato basil bread has 610 calories.

The Twisted Fork

Location: Triangle Town Center

The sushi-grade ahi tuna served over pickled ginger and mixed greens is a svelte 209 calories.

McCormick & Schmick's

Location: Crabtree Valley Mall

For lunch, Atlantic salmon roasted on a cedar plank and served with mashed potatoes with a berry sauce has 700 calories. You could shave off more calories with steamed vegetables instead of mashed potatoes. You probably had gravy-drenched mashed potatoes on Thanksgiving anyway. For dinner, the Chilean sea bass served with miso broth and udon noodles has 700 calories.

Chick-fil-A

Locations: Numerous shopping centers, including Cary Towne Center and Crabtree

The key to eating healthy at Chick-fil-A is choosing the chargrilled chicken. The chargrilled chicken sandwich has 260 calories, versus 410 calories for the regular chicken sandwich. You could go one better and order a chargrilled chicken salad, which has less than 250 calories without dressing; options include the Southwest chargrilled salad, chargrilled chicken garden salad and the chargrilled chicken and fruit salad.