Reese Witherspoon has defended eating snow from outside her home.

The Oscar-winning actress recently filmed a TikTok video of herself making a "Chococinno", which involved mixing snow, cold brew coffee, chocolate and salted caramel syrups.

Following online criticism of her design, Reese explained in another video: "There's so many people on here saying 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?"

In a follow-up video, Reese laughed off criticism of her frosty snack.

The 47-year-old star - who lives in Nashville, Tennessee - said: "OK so we're kind of in a category of '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."

Reese subsequently suggested that the controversy was a generational issue, with the actress admitting that she "didn't grow up drinking filtered water".

The Hollywood star said on TikTok: "OK, 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, when it was hot, we drank out of the hose, like, we put our mouth on the hose, growing up."

Reese - who is now one of the best-paid actresses in the movie business - jokingly added: "Maybe that's why I'm like this. So what you're saying to me is I have to filter the snow before I eat it? I just can't. Filtered snow. I don't know how to do that."