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Wal-Mart Takes Over an East Bay Grocery Store; Wendy’s Is Now Bigger Than Burger King

• Pleasanton looks like it will be getting a Wal-Mart grocery store, replacing a vacated former Nob Hill Foods, and the residents there seem broadly in favor of it. [Tribune]

• Today’s subject du jour on the Bauer blog, via some complaining reader mail: How come every salad in town has cheese on it these days? We’d be more apt to ask why a salad should ever not have cheese on it, but we digress. [Between Meals/Scoop]

• Following on yesterday’s Beard nominee announcement, Brett Thorn at National Restaurant News predicts wins for Daniel Patterson and Nancy Oakes’s Boulevard this year. It’s all about gravitas. [FoodWriter/NRN]

• Wendy’s has beat out Burger King to be the No. 2 fast-food chain in the country. Must be no one liked that creepy king guy. [USAT]

• If you’re trying to lose weight, an app could be an effective ally, a study shows. [NYDN]

• Great news: restaurant sales (for chains, anyway) rose 3.4 percent last year. [NRN]

• Yin and yang isn’t just a symbol hippy-dippy types are into, it’s the guiding principle of balance behind Chinese cuisine [Reuters]

• Andrew Zimmern is not only into bizarre foods, but also sustainable ones: He wants us to eat more donkey, sardines, and offal. [Eatocracy/CNN]

Wal-Mart Takes Over an East Bay Grocery Store; Wendy’s Is Now Bigger Than