Reese Witherspoon Ate Some Snow, and TikTok Got So Mad About It

Reese Witherspoon sparked an unexpected debate on TikTok this weekend when she posted a video of herself eating snow with her family. The 47-year-old actress posted a video where she scooped freshly fallen snow into coffee mugs and brought it inside to garnish with sweets and drink mixes. She seemed taken aback when commenters were horrified, saying that the snow was too dirty to eat.

Witherspoon’s video was a typical crafty TikTok montage with the actress narrating in voice-over. She scooped snow off the top of a jacuzzi straight into her mugs, then brought it inside to eat. She drizzed chocolate syrup over the snow, added a splash of cold brew coffee and tried a few other things on camera. She said that the results were great and tried to settle on a catchy name for her creation. Instead, commenters warned her that it was not healthy for her or her family to eat snow.

Witherspoon ended up making three more TikToks following up on her homemade snow cone, all answering comments about the safety of eating snow. In the first one, she said: “So, there’s so many people on here saying that snow is dirty, so we went and took snow from the backyard and we microwaved it, and it’s clear. Is this bad? Am I not supposed to eat snow?”

When commenters persisted, Witherspoon explained her mindset on the issue. She said: “Okay, so we’re kind of in the category of, like, ‘you only live once,’ and it snows maybe once a year here! I don’t know? Also, I want to say something: it was delicious! It was so good!”

Finally, Witherspoon felt that her outlook might be different from her commenters because she had never been particularly precious about her drinking water. She said: “Talking about the snow not being filtered – I didn’t grow up drinking filtered water, We drank out of the tap water. We actually put our mouths on the tap! And then sometimes, like in the summer it was hot, we drank out of the hose. Like we put our mouths on the hose. So like, filtered water…? I didn’t – maybe that’s why I’m like this. So what you’re saying to me is I have to filter the snow before I… I can’t do that!”

For those interested, the best advice from scientists and health experts seems to be that eating snow is relatively low-risk as long as you’re careful about when and where you pick it up. Obviously, snow that is visibly dirty is no good, and snow that has been stepped on, driven on or has sat out for a long period of time could have debris or contaminants in it. At the same time, according to a report by NPR it is best not to eat snow as soon as it falls.

That’s because snow’s intricate structure allows it to pick up pollutants as it drifts through the atmosphere, including soot from rising smoke, among other things. Scientists say that if you wait a few hours after the snowfall begins, the first wave will have caught most of these pollutants and the snow at the end of the storm will be much cleaner. However, depending on where you are and what is nearby, snow may still contain sulfates, nitrates, formaldehyde and even mercury. Most experts believe that these contaminants will be “at levels well below toxic” no matter when you scoop up your snow, but for those playing it safe, snow cones may be better made inside.