Reese Witherspoon has been frozen out online after sharing a divisive recipe for an icy caramel and coffee drink using freshly fallen snow.
The star shared her "Choccocino" recipe in an upbeat TikTok video that has been viewed 5.1 million times so far, which has seemingly dismayed almost as many viewers as it delighted, and prompted questions on whether or not it's safe to eat snow.
Witherspoon starts her video noting that they got "a tonne of snow over the past few days". She then scoops two mugs full of fresh snow, and adds salted caramel and chocolate syrups.
She adds ready made cold brew "just to have a yummy coffee flavour", and is shown eating the concoction with a spoon.
"Okay, I know what to call it", she says. "A snow salt choccocino."
Within a day, Witherspoon was inundated with responses questioning how safe it is to eat snow, prompting her to make a number of follow up videos about the choccocino.
"There are so many people on here saying that snow is dirty," she says, in response to one comment. "So we went and took snow from the backyard and microwaved it and it's clear - is this bad? Am I not supposed to eat snow?"
Another comment claimed that "fallen snow can be very dirty from the air and wind", before adding, "but who cares. You only live once."
"So we're kind of in the category of, like, you only live once and it snows maybe once a year here", Witherspoon says. "Also, I want to say something. It was delicious."
The Legally Blonde star finally underscored her argument by asserting that eating snow doesn't bother her because she "didn't grow up drinking filtered water".
"We drank out of the tap water", she says. "We actually put our mouths on the tap, and then sometimes in the summer, when it was hot we drank out of the hose."
Ceebrities, they're just like us.
As for whether or not snow is safe to eat, experts broadly agree that it is, when done with some precautions. Yellow or slightly murky snow is a clear no, for obvious reasons, and there is some guidance on when you should eat it.
Speaking to the BBC, Staci Simonich, professor of environmental and toxic ecology at Oregon State University, said it is safe to eat as long as it is from "a non-urban area" and that people wait "until the first few centimetres fallen".
"The first bit of snow scrubs pollutants from the atmosphere," she said, adding that is it best to "eat a small amount" from an "area where no people or animals have walked".
As for drinking from the hose, that is a potentially less safe choice. Oliver A.H. Jones, a professor of chemistry at RMIT University, advised against it in an article about water myths: "Water might have sat in there, in the warm sun for weeks or more potentially leading to bacterial buildup."
