Why Everyone is Drinking Oat Milk

A glass of raw oat milk.

 

Nutrition is never as straightforward as it should be. Part of that has to do with food science being a living, breathing thing; like when a new method for measuring calories uncovered that almonds are less calorie-dense than we initially thought. But it also has to do with nutrition fads and with marketing. We’re consistently told that some new product is better than what we were using before, and it can be hard to separate fact from fiction.

With that in mind, let’s take a closer look at oat milk. It’s a product that is definitely having its moment in the spotlight: not only did oat milk company Oatly buy a Super Bowl spot this year, but now Starbucks locations can’t keep it stocked because of its popularity.

 

 

It hasn’t yet passed almond milk for most popular dairy alternative, but it’s fair to wonder if that moment will come soon: it’s currently more popular than soy milk, and oat milk sales grew by about 300% in 2020 alone.

Why? For one thing, people like the way it mixes into coffee. If you’ve experimented with dairy alternatives before, you know that many of them do not mix well with coffee. They curdle, or separate, or leave the coffee tasting just a little bit off. Oat milk doesn’t seem to have these issues. And its natural creaminess makes it a perfect substitute for traditional dairy.

Taste is part of the equation. But so, too, is the sustainability of oat milk. Much has been written in recent years about the resources required to farm almonds, with some suggesting that a single almond requires about a gallon of water to reach maturity. And while almond farming is still less resource-intensive than dairy farming, most almonds are grown in drought-prone California, where that gallon of water is more precious than it might be elsewhere. Oats require significantly less water than almonds, and just slightly more land.

 

 

There are, of course, other considerations. For example, oat milk is allergy-friendly. So if you’re allergic to tree nuts (almond milk) or soy, oat milk might be your next-best option. And there are also nutritional differences to consider. Oat milk does have more calories in a serving than almond milk, but it also has more protein.

Everything points to oat milk being a mainstay in the dairy alternative market. So whether you’re cutting out dairy for the first time, or simply wondering if there’s a tastier alternative to what you’re using, a carton of oat milk might be a good investment.

 

Matthew Wolff Returns from Hiatus, Opens Up About Mental Health

Matthew Wolff finishes a shot at the 2020 US Open

 

Matthew Wolff had a rather inconspicuous weekend at the US Open. True, he started Saturday in third place and was just one shot off the lead. But he was pretty average on Saturday and Sunday, and finished the tournament at +1 — still good for a tie of 15th place, but far from threatening to win it all.

And for Wolff, that’s just fine. The 22-year-old, who finished as runner-up at last year’s US Open, was playing his first golf in almost two months.

That two-month break was self-imposed. Wolff had a string of tough finishes early in the year, including an opening round 83 that prompted him to withdraw from the WGC-Workday Championship. Then in April, he was disqualified from the Masters for signing an incorrect scorecard.

Far from just bad luck, or a bad run, Wolff’s mental health was falling apart.

 

 

“I just didn’t quite know how to deal with it. As good as my life is, 22 years old and on the PGA Tour, there’s also a lot of stress and pressure that comes along with it, and it got to me,” Wolff told reporters on the weekend. “I was hopeless for five months. And I was really struggling.”

He decided to step away, a decision that couldn’t have been easy. Getting help for yourself — especially when you exist in the public eye — tends to leave little room for privacy. But Wolff faced reporters’ questions head-on in his first tournament back, and was frank about his struggle. It’s a struggle that he knows isn’t over.

“I mean, Thursday and even today, even after playing well yesterday, I was still like I wanted to stay in bed,” Wolff admitted. “I wanted to be like where I was comfortable, not in the spotlight.”

He said that his focus for the weekend was just to enjoy playing again — to keep a level head, even through bad putts and missed fairways. And he says he accomplished that. But he also recognizes that mental health is more than a single battle; more than just one weekend with a positive attitude. “I’ll probably be working on the same thing that I’m working on now for the rest of my career.”

Hints on Habit-Forming From an 88-Year-Old

 

When we talk about making changes in our lives, what we’re really talking about is forming new habits. But as you’ve no doubt realized, breaking from routine — even if it’s done in service of a new routine — is hard. Really hard. It’s why so many health articles, TED Talks, and apps promise that they’ve found the solution. So few of us believe we have the answer; so many of us are looking to try something new.

Part of the problem, of course, is that there’s no single rule for building habits that’s going to work for everyone. With that in mind, blogger Darius Foroux decided to think outside the box. He recognized that his 88-year-old grandfather had certain healthy habits that were etched in stone: things like going for a daily walk, or going to bed at the same time every night.

So instead of trying the next in a long line of habit-tracking apps, Darius asked his grandfather to explain how he’d formed those iron-clad habits. And he says that his grandfather’s process comes down to these four steps.

 

Step 1: Decide What Habit You Want to Form, and Why

The ‘what’ of a habit is easy enough. But Darius’s grandfather insists that you should have a firm reason for why you’re trying to form a particular habit. Don’t attempt to wake up at 6:00 every morning just because it’s what “successful people” do. Figure out what’s important to you — or what goal you’re trying to accomplish — and set out to build your habits from there.

 

Step 2: Pick a Set Time For Your Habit

Darius acknowledges that if you’re not a retired 88-year-old, this one might prove difficult. But the idea is that if you value something, and want to commit to doing it daily, putting it in your calendar in permanent ink will force you to make time for it.

 

Step 3: Measure Your Habits

There is a lot to be said for measuring your goals. Measuring keeps you accountable, for one thing. And being able to look back on what you’ve accomplished — say in miles run, or in minutes spent doing yoga — can be a powerful motivator. But motivation and accountability aside, measuring your habits will also help with the step above. If you know how long you need to complete a habit, it will be easier to work it into your day.

 

Step 4: Do It For at Least One Week

You’ve probably seen a half-dozen assertions about how long it takes to form a habit. Darius refers to research that says it takes 66 days. You’ve probably seen other people say it takes 28 days. But according to Darius’s grandfather, it takes just 7. “In my experience, it takes a week to get used to doing something regularly,” he told Darius. “So if you successfully wake up at the same time every day for seven days straight, you can count on yourself to do it every day from that point.”

Maybe that’s the confidence of a man with an iron will, someone to whom habit-forming comes easily. But maybe he’s right. Maybe — with a schedule in place, and with a solid understanding of what’s motivating us — a week is all it takes.

It certainly can’t hurt to try.

Andre Agassi on How Empathy Gave Him an Edge

Agassi gets ready to return a serve.

 

We’ve all heard the expression that certain athletes “think the game” on a different level, or that so-and-so has a high basketball IQ. It’s a cliché, for sure, but it’s an accurate one. Some players really are better at reading an opposing team, or recognizing a shift in momentum.

Often, a player demonstrates that IQ in an obvious way, and in a moment that might later be recognized as a turning point in a game. But for every instance of in-game IQ that we do see, there might be five that we don’t. And one of the best reveals of that invisible IQ came in this interview with Andre Agassi.

He talks about coming up against Boris Becker, a German player who featured one of the biggest serves of his era. Agassi, like the rest of the men’s tour, was having trouble with Becker’s serve; it “was something the game had never seen before,” he told Unscriptd, and he lost to Becker three straight times when the two started playing each other.

Agassi committed to studying Becker’s serve. And after poring over footage of the German, he recognized that Becker had a tell: as he lifted the ball in the air, his tongue would point in the direction that he was serving. So while Becker was still able to send big booming serves over the net, Agassi now knew which way those serves were headed.

For most of us, our next thought is: Wow. That’s some next-level tennis IQ. But what made Agassi special is that his next thought was about how to keep his new knowledge secret; not from other competitors, but from Becker himself.

If Becker caught on and recognized that he was tipping his serve, he’d likely be able to identify what was happening. And the fix, of course, was rather simple: all he would’ve needed to do was keep his mouth closed while serving.

“I had to resist the temptation of reading his serve for the majority of the match,” Agassi explained. “I didn’t have a problem breaking his serve. I had a problem hiding the fact that I could break his serve at will.”

Agassi went on to win 9 of his next 11 matches with Becker. And he says that ‘solving’ Boris Becker was a matter of empathy: “The more you understand what the problem is through other people’s lens[es], the more you can solve for people.”

How to Feel Confident at Your Next Yoga Class

 

Most of us have, at some point, considered making yoga a part of our regular routine. I bet it would help my golf game, we think, or maybe we’re looking for something that can help us manage our stress. 

But for all of yoga’s benefits, yoga classes can be intimidating. As a beginner, it can feel like everyone but you knows what they’re doing; never mind that everyone else’s yoga outfit is so put-together it looks like a team uniform. 

It’s true that there are more options than ever for doing yoga at home. But even with pre-recorded classes, the knowledge gap (How am I supposed to know what Warrior Pose is?) and the flexibility gap (How will I ever be able to move like that?) can be discouraging.

Overcoming those gaps will, of course, take time and repetition. But in the meantime, Best Health Magazine breaks down 7 things you can do outside of yoga class that will help build your confidence. 

Some of that advice is straightforward. They advise, for example, that you not start a class with a full stomach. But there are also things that are less intuitive, like strengthening your wrists. Because many poses involve wrist strength, working to make yours stronger (or simply warming up your wrists before class) should make those poses easier to hold.

Finally — and though you might not want to hear it — the clothes you wear to class are important. For one thing: looking good can help you to feel good. But you also want an outfit that won’t impede your movement. For this reason, yoga instructor Dempsey Marks prefers form-fitting pants and tops: “I don’t like the way loose clothing hangs and gets caught on my limbs during practice.”

Again, yoga is like any other activity: competence comes with practice. But a tweak or two to your yoga routine — especially if you’re struggling — can help you stick with it through those first couple of classes.

Fraser-Pryce Becomes the Fastest Woman Alive – at 34

 

When high-performance athletes break barriers, they typically do it when they’re young. Michael Phelps set the Olympic record for most gold medals in a Games when he was 23. Usain Bolt was 21 when he set the world record in the 200m in Beijing. And when Simone Biles won 4 golds and 1 bronze in Rio, she was just 19 years old.

Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce was 34 when she competed at a track meet in Jamaica earlier this month. She was already the reigning world champion in the 100 metres (she won gold at the World Championships in Qatar in 2019), but she managed to set the bar even higher. She posted a time of 10.63 seconds, the second-fastest time ever and well ahead of Tokyo 2020 favourite Sha’Carri Richardson of the US.

 

 

Despite setting the track on fire – and despite Olympic gold in Beijing and in London – Fraser-Pryce is not yet a lock for the Jamaican National Team. (That gets decided at the national championships later this month.) But for right now, she’s finding joy in just competing, and in finally accomplishing one of her long-term goals.

“If I’m able to run 10.6 now … I’m just looking forward to what the process will bring,” she told Business Day. “I’m continuing the work because I did say that this year I wanted nothing more than to break the 10.7 barrier and I did it.”

If Fraser-Pryce does go to Tokyo and does somehow manage to win gold in the 100m, she’d become the oldest woman ever to win an individual sprint event. More than that, she’d become the only woman ever to win three Olympic golds in a single track-and-field discipline.

At the Olympics, of course, nothing is a given. World Champions stumble all the time, and the 100m leaves so little room for error. But, as the fastest woman alive, you’d have to think that Fraser-Pryce just became the favourite.

Abandoned at Birth, Freddie Figgers is Now a Tech Millionaire

 

Not only was Freddie Figgers abandoned at birth, but he was also mocked for it in school. “Kids used to bully me and call me, ‘Dumpster baby,’ ‘Trash can boy,’” Figgers told BBC News. “I remember getting off the school bus sometimes and kids used to just come behind and grab me and throw me in a trash can and laugh at me.”

Figgers had, in fact, been left by a dumpster when he was just days old. He was discovered by Nathan and Betty Mae Figgers, a couple in their 50s who had fostered many children and whose own kids were just about ready to move out. Nathan and Betty Mae decided that Freddie deserved a permanent home, and decided to adopt him.

They were loving parents. And Nathan, in particular, was keen to encourage Freddie’s interest in electronics. So while the family couldn’t afford a new computer, Nathan managed to secure an old – and, it turned out, non-functioning – Macintosh Classic from Goodwill.

 

 

Freddie was just 8 at the time. But he took the Mac apart, swapped out some broken capacitors, and managed to get the computer working again. Granted, it took about fifty tries to get it working. But Figgers says he still remembers the moment that the Mac sprung to life. “That computer took away all of the pain of getting bullied.”

It also led to his first part-time job. In Quincy (the small, north Florida city where Freddie grew up), the mayor was also the director of the after-school program. And it wasn’t long before she noticed Freddie’s knack for tinkering with – and successfully fixing – the school’s computers. She invited Freddie to city hall, and eventually arranged for him to spend a couple of hours each week fixing the city’s computers.

He was more than just tech support. At 15, he learned that the city was in touch with a software company; they wanted a program built that would monitor the city’s water pressure gauges. Freddie went to the city manager. “I said, ‘Sir, listen, if you give me an opportunity, I could build the same program.’ So he gave me that opportunity and I built that program exactly to the specifications that they needed.”

He saved the city hundreds of thousands of dollars. But more importantly, the project jump-started his desire to innovate. When his father began wandering off at night (a symptom of his Alzheimer’s), Figgers developed a GPS tracker/two-way radio that fits into the sole of his father’s shoe. Years later he designed a smart glucometer, one that can transmit a user’s blood sugar readings and alert close relatives to crashes and spikes.

Now, Figgers is the CEO of Figgers Communication, the only Black-owned telecom company in the country. He is a self-made millionaire. But he is also determined to give back to the community; to give others the chance that his mother and father gave him. That includes running a foundation that invests in education and healthcare initiatives, like providing bikes to children in foster care.

“Knowing my father, he wasn’t a rich man at all,” explains Figgers, “but he [made an impact on] so many people’s lives and I want to just do right by everyone I meet and help everyone I can.”

Paralympic Athlete Looks to Medal in 4th Sport

 

Paralympic athlete Oksana Masters is already what you might call prolific. Masters has won eight Paralympic medals across three different sports, and this summer she’ll aim to medal in a fourth in Tokyo.

But on top of training for para-cycling (a sport that she’s competed in, but hasn’t yet medalled in), Masters has also had to find time to train for skiing. She competes in both cross-country and biathlon in the Winter Games, and – because of the quirks of pandemic scheduling –- those Winter Games will be played just six months after Masters competes in the Summer Paralympics in Tokyo.

Rather than focus on one, Masters is aiming to compete at both.

 

 

“I love pushing myself into uncomfortable situations because I truly believe that’s where … I learn the most and I learn new things about myself,” Masters told Bob Reinert. “It’s just incredible how the body and the mind automatically — if you let [them] — start adapting to the situation you’re in if you stay with the right perspective.”

If anyone knows about being uncomfortable, it’s Masters. Her first Paralympic medal came in rowing when she earned bronze at the London Games in 2012. Rowing had long been an outlet for Masters, dating back to the first years after her legs were amputated, but a back injury in 2013 forced her out of rowing permanently.

From there she transitioned to cross-country skiing, a sport she fell into “almost by accident” she told ESPN last year. She won a silver in 2014, and four years later – competing at Pyeongchang with a dislocated elbow – she took home five medals, including two gold.

Continuing her dominance on the snow would not be surprising. And although a para-cycling medal just 6 months earlier might stun the rest of us, you can bet that Masters will be expecting it. After all, after recently trying out some running blades, she started mulling over what the 2024 Games might hold for her. A running event? Maybe the long jump?

“Sometimes,” she wrote for ESPN, “all you need is to hear that things are possible.”

Convenience Store Clerk Returns Woman’s $1 Million Lottery Ticket

 

It sounds like the kind of hypothetical question you might debate among friends: If you found a winning, $1 million scratch ticket, would you try to find its original owner? Or would you keep the money for yourself?

A convenience store clerk in Massachusetts recently had the chance to answer that question for real. Abhi Shah told ABC News that he was going through discarded tickets one night when he discovered that one of those tickets had an unscratched number. It turned out the ticket was a winner, to the tune of $1 million.

Think, just for a second, about how easy it would have been to claim that ticket for yourself. But while that must have crossed Shah’s mind, he knew exactly who had discarded the ticket: Lea Rose Fiega, who is a regular at his parents’ convenience store.

 

Lea Rose Fiega threw out a $1 million lottery ticket, thinking she had lost. Photo Credit: Massachusetts State Lottery

 

“I was in a hurry, on lunch break, and just scratched it real quick,” Fiega explained. “And it didn’t look like a winner, so I handed it over to them to throw away.”

When Shah discovered the ticket 10 days later, he went straight to Fiega’s office and told her to come back to the store. “So I went over there and that’s when they told me. I was in total disbelief. I cried, I hugged them.”

Fiega is now $1 million richer. And as for Shah: his family’s store gets a $10,000 bonus from the state lottery commission for selling the winning ticket. On top of that, Fiega kicked in a little bonus of her own. “I mean, who does that?” she asked ABC. “They’re great people. I am beyond blessed.”

Documentary Details the Early Struggles of Famous Bands

 

When you hear the phrase “rock star,” it probably brings to mind impressive stage shows, private jets, and lavish backstage spreads.

And for legacy rock bands like U2, Aerosmith, and the Red Hot Chili Peppers, that’s undoubtedly true. But a new documentary, directed by Dave Grohl of the Foo Fighters, looks back at those bands’ humble beginnings.

It’s called What Drives Us, and at first glance, it’s a documentary about touring; about what it’s like for four-plus people to live out of a van that also has to fit all of your equipment. But it’s also about what drove these bands to push past those struggles, and what inspired them to pursue a career in music in the first place.

You hear, for example, about (Chili Peppers’ bassist) Flea taking up the trumpet as a kid because it kept him out of the house, and away from his abusive stepdad. And AC/DC’s Brian Johnson explains that there were just two ways out of the small English town he was born in: either you were good enough to play pro soccer, or you became a musician.

What Drives Us covers a lot of ground. There are interviews with Ringo Starr, with Lars Ulrigh of Metallica, with Slash and Duff McKagan of Guns ‘N Roses – plus about a dozen other bands ranging from No Doubt to post-hardcore band Fugazi. And the always-reflective Grohl does a nice job of tying all these stories together.

“There’s no guarantee that it will ever pay off,” he says about crossing the country and playing shows every night. “The reward has to be the experience.”