Reese Witherspoon must be at her home in Tennessee right now because she’s been making Tik Tok videos about all of the snow they’ve gotten recently. More specifically, she made one video in which she took fresh snow from outside of her house, added a bunch of ingredients to it, and called it a “salted snowy cappuccino.” After the first video, people blew up her comments to tell her that it was gross and that snow is dirty. So of course, Reese made three follow-up videos. In the first one, she showed a microwaved cup of snow that had turned into clear water while cheekily asking, “Am I not supposed to eat snow?” You could tell she thought that would be the end of it, but that’s not how the Internet works. In the second response video, Reese basically pulls a YOLO. In the third one, she tries to justify it by sharing that she drank unfiltered water while growing up.
Reese Witherspoon found out the hard way, when you make a TikTok dining on snow, you might get a chilly reception. After scooping freshly fallen snow off of her car with two mugs, Witherspoon added chocolate syrup and salted caramel syrup to the flurries, before topping it off with some cold brew and enjoying. “Salted snowy capaccino…a snow salt chococinno,” she dubbed the twist on shaved ice.
But not long after she shared her recipe with the world, the world called her gross…in so many words. Fans took to the comments in horror that the Morning Show star was eating snow, which is apparently a controversial practice. “Am I not supposed to eat snow?” Witherspoon asked in a follow-up video, even microwaving another cup of snow to show that it was clear and not dirty. “We’re kind of in the category of ‘you only live once,’ and it snows maybe once a year here. Also I want to say something…it was delicious,” she added. “I didn’t grow up drinking filtered water, I drank out of the tap,” she said in her third video response to the haters. “We drank out of the hose, we put our mouth on the hose…maybe that’s why I’m like this.”
Look, bless her heart for trying, but I don’t know, eating snow is an odd hill to die on. If it were me, I wouldn’t have even made the first response video, lol. She should have X’d out of the app and enjoyed her snowy treat. When it comes to the comments, the Internet has the home field advantage, so sometimes it’s best ignore them. I’m just not sure justifying eating clean snow with “Back in my day, we drank water out of a hose” is a winning argument. You liked the caramel snow, own it!
Now, to be fair to Reese, she grew up in the South and snow cream is a whole thing down here. I grew up on Long Island and had never heard of it before I moved to the South. Did y’all make snow cream or try to eat snow as kids? My husband and kids tried to make it one time. I did not partake because it wasn’t for me, but I wasn’t going to yuck their snow day yum. I did look it up, though, and scientists say that you can eat snow, but with a lot of caveats. So yeah, let the woman eat her cappuccino-infused snow.
Photos credit: Xavier Collin/Image Press Agency/Avalon, Jeffrey Mayer/Avalon and via TikTok
Snow cream is a thing in Virginia. I’m not a fan, but there’s a lady on the street that makes it for all the kids and honestly, it’s probably the least toxic thing they’re going to eat all day with all the hormones and chemicals and preservatives in their food supply despite my best efforts to source organic and grow my own. We have gas heating and a gas stove so I’m just gonna say that snow is low on my “Oh noooooos” list.
What I was thinking. It would be nice if people put this much energy into worrrying about the pesticides, medications, micro-plastics and other pollutants that make their way into the water and food they eat all the time.
All of those things are found in atmospheric water though, so it’s absolutely in the snow.
For a “fun” experiment, melt some fresh snow in a coffee filter and see what’s left on it 😵💫
Yes, but people aren’t eating snow as much as they are drinking water and eating foods without thought to any of this.
We made it in Virginia Beach when it snowed and we drank water from the hose, 40 years later I have yet to glow in the dark or sprout an additional limb…
@SJP-NYC We made it in Norfolk! I was just talking to my sister, who now lives in upstate New York. They all think she’s a weirdo. I’m so glad I saw this. It’s absolutely a thing. I don’t know, people who think it’s unclean aren’t necessarily wrong, but that doesn’t mean it’s harmful. In the nicest way, more people might literally need to touch grass every once in a while.
I may side eye Reese on a number of things, the whole dontcha know who I am is one, this, is a big nope. It’s a thing. I’m in WI and, not saying it’s a Wisconsin thing, but we as kids collected the newly fresh fallen snow to have Hawaiian Punch poured over for snow cones. We were, what was considered country back then. Stay away from the yellow snow was the rule.
Will have to look up snow cream. Familiar with the maple syrup and snow treats.
I’m from Maryland and we always made it – I usually just made something with maple syrup and snow, but we had a more “complicated” recipe for a more official snow cream that was really good too. Just don’t eat the yellow snow, LOL.
Isn’t there maple syrup candy that is made with snow?
Snow cream is definitely a thing in Indiana and it is fun and delicious. I swear to pete, one of the reasons people get sick so often is that everyone has tried to protect themselves and their kids from any sort of germ they might ever encounter. And yes, I drank from the garden hose, as recently as last summer!
My kids were HORRIFIED when they found out we drank water from the hose growing up. HORRIFIED. Yet here we are – alive after that and not wearing seatbelts, not wearing helmets when riding bikes —- the list goes on and on.
The hose thing never bothered me (or my kid), but my bestie worked in an ER for years and to be fair, the people who weren’t OK without a seatbelt, probably aren’t around to say that “they survived it just fine”. I don’t know a lot of people, but I know of at least 2 people who have died (as responsible adults) motorcycle riding without helmets. Seat belts reduce the risk of death by 45%, cut the risk of serious injury by 50% and people not wearing a seat belt are 30 times more likely to be ejected from a vehicle during a crash (which never ends well). Some things are actually improvements.
Agreed. And thankfully the seatbelts was enacted into law where I live. I recall as a little girl how people reacted but these are the same people who don’t want gun regulation.
I eat fast food on occasion (like millions of other Americans). How is that as bad if not worse than any of these other risk factors?
Snow cream for life! We made it growing up in Virginia as well; it’s all about getting it as soon as it falls and from specific locations that you know are cleaner. Don’t be waiting until the next day or grabbing it from underneath a tree. Anyway, people need to not freak out about something that you eat like once a year
Had to Google snow cream! Does it taste like sorbet? I’d try it, but I’m also old enough to remember drinking from public water fountains seemingly without contracting any illness or infections LOL
It’s like a granita. We always made it when we got snow in South Carolina. You get a bowl full of clean snow (or leave a bowl out to collect snow when you know it’s coming). Then just mix in heavy cream & sweetener (or I guess other flavors like coffee). It’s a fun treat.
This is how humans have always done it – collecting rain water or snow. Not that we dont have contemporary pollution to consider BUT this is extremely natural.
Even now you can watch this lady’s video about how people in Yakutia (area of Siberia) collect ice to melt later. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Pe8nePMChI
People don’t understand the concept of risk. Just because you do something risky, doesn’t mean something bad is going to happen. Also dose and exposure time is a thing. Would I eat a bowl of raw cookie dough? No. Do I sometimes give the spoon a lick? Of course.
Something that does worry me is that fear of contamination is highly correlated with racism. Enough so that if you are doing a study, questions about feelings of disgust (and are some people naturally better than others) are used to measure racism. I worry that keeping kids (and adults) always worried about being clean and food being safe isn’t harming the younger generation in ways we don’t understand.
I grew up in the south in a subregion where it doesn’t snow. Literally my whole life it snowed twice, once enough to make a snowman, that’s it. And then as an adult moved my family to Colorado and that is where I learned about snow cream. Every snow day my kids go out and get some from the very top layer, never from the ground itself. Usually from a piece of patio furniture or even a kitchen pot we put outside to collect it for the specific purpose of making it.
Social media is just one giant dog pile these days, I’m so over it
Canadian here 💁♀️. Just last week, I poured some heated maple syrup in the snow to make snow taffy (that’s what we call it anyway) and it was delicious and I’m still here to tell the tale. I grew up eating snow without thinking twice about it (as long as it isn’t yellow or full of dirt) as opposed to drinking water from a stream/river, which is just asking for beaver fever 💩 🤮
I grew up with snow 6 months out of the year. Daily fresh, white snow and we would make mini snow balls and munch away. No yellow snow or snow covered with animal tracks, only the premium stuff.
I was going to say, if eating snow was dangerous there would be a lot of Canadians in serious trouble.
We used to try and catch snowflakes on our tongue as a game.
I love snow taffy, I haven’t had any yet this winter.
This is silly! There is nothing wrong with snow cream. Or that variation that Reese made. Yes the air/atmosphere is dirtier now compared to our childhood. So is everything else!
No one bats an eye when people inject Botox into their face! Or eating a jar of Alfredo sauce with 30 ingredients. So people getting mad at Reese for eating snow makes no sense.
Grew up in and still live in the Upper Midwest where snow is a regular thing. I’ve never heard of “snow cream” but we would eat snow as kids when it first fell and we were out playing in it. We knew better than to eat it after it had been around for a while (ha). We also drank from the garden hose and did all kinds of things kids don’t do today, including riding our bikes down to the Mississippi River and wading/swimming in the summer. No parental supervision. People need to calm down.
I’m surprised you didn’t make snow cream on Long Island since we were making it in New Jersey in the 70s.
I’m more bothered by the fact that she picks the snow off her car to eat it. I get that her car is really clean but still it’s grossing me out.
In the video I saw, the snow she removed was the top layer and never touched the car. To be exact ‘she picked the snow off other snow to eat it.’ Nothing gross about that.
I think I would be too afraid to eat bird poop by accident.
I grew up in DC, and I remember trying to make snow cream and even trying to make the maple syrup candy — after reading about it in one of the Laura Ingalls Wilder books. What I missed out on, though, is a treat that my Mom described from her own early childhood: Milk would be delivered to their house in glass bottles. The cream would rise to the top, and, sometimes, would freeze. So they would mix the frozen cream with vanilla and sugar for their own ice cream — without the bother of having to crank and churn it in their ice cream freezer.
Texan and every time it snowed we ate it. We put just vanilla extract on it. I made it for my kiddo during the storm, before it got insane.
We drank hose water too, and ate fruit and veggies and clover strait off of the plants or out of the ground. I fail to see the big deal or need to respond.
Isn’t this the lady who told law enforcement don’t you know who I am or something. Why are we surprised she would double down on eating snow pack off the ground? She probably does other asinine things we don’t know about too.
We made snow cones out of snow (midwest). We’d make some kool-aid, go get snow in a cup and poured the kool-aid on it. Instant snow cone! Also, drank water out of a hose. It is the same water that comes out of the faucet in the house. My kiddos did the same thing.
This reminds me of those Little House on the Prairie books where they talked about eating snow with syrup.
This whole thing is silly and cute. Everyone complaining about this is just too precious. People freak out about the weirdest stuff.
When I was a little kid I remember going outside barefoot with a big spoon to eat fresh snow 🤣 I don’t know where I got the idea from but everyone else thought it was funny.
We used to put maple syrup on snow in Chicago. Erythritol has been proven to increase rates of heart attack and stroke, Ozempic can cause thyroid tumors. Let me eat my damn snow in peace.