# Why you shouldn't eat snow - a question for our warm-weather members. **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [May 29, 2014, 2:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-you-shouldnt-eat-snow-a-question-for-our-warm-weather-members/689524 "2014-05-29T02:18:54Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![TruCelt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/trucelt/32/523_2.png) [@TruCelt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TruCelt)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2014, 11:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-you-shouldnt-eat-snow-a-question-for-our-warm-weather-members/689524/21 "2014-05-29T11:40:02Z")
Without reading other answers: The process of melting it and keeping yourself warm actually uses more water than the snow will provide. You can dehydrate yourself and speed up hypothermia by eating snow. Make a fire to melt it to use for drinking. Raised in Virginia, near Washington, DC ---
**Author:** ![robert\_columbia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e79b87/32.png) [@robert\_columbia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robert_columbia)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2014, 1:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-you-shouldnt-eat-snow-a-question-for-our-warm-weather-members/689524/22 "2014-05-29T13:19:13Z")
> [@Battle\_Pope](#): > > … > I guess a similar thing for here is the overseas tourist who’s car breaks down while travelling in remote areas, who aren’t carrying extra water and try to walk out for help and don’t make it… This is also a problem in many remote areas of the US, which does include areas between some major metropolitan areas. Silly Dutch tourists, you can’t just drive from NYC to LA for the weekend. It’s a several days journey with much of the western part of it going through hot, dry desert areas. Bring water. I’m so seriously. ---
**Author:** ![Eureka](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/74df32/32.png) [@Eureka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eureka)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2014, 1:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-you-shouldnt-eat-snow-a-question-for-our-warm-weather-members/689524/23 "2014-05-29T13:24:50Z")
Count me in the group that would not have known why one shouldn’t eat snow-- despite growing up in Minnesota. But I lived in the suburbs of the Twin Cities (Minneapolis-St. Paul), and didn’t do much wilderness survival stuff. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2014, 1:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-you-shouldnt-eat-snow-a-question-for-our-warm-weather-members/689524/24 "2014-05-29T13:46:49Z")
> [@EmAnJ](#): > > So, can the warm-weathered members guess _why_ you shouldn’t eat snow in these situations? Please spoiler your answers for the first while to keep the answer a surprise. 🙂 [spoiler]It’ll rapidly drop your core temperature and you’ll be hypothermic before you know it. Also, it might be yellow snow :)[/spoiler] What do you know, all that cold-weather stuff they taught us in (South African) Scouts actually stuck. ---
**Author:** ![Shalmanese](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/45deac/32.png) [@Shalmanese](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shalmanese)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2014, 2:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-you-shouldnt-eat-snow-a-question-for-our-warm-weather-members/689524/25 "2014-05-29T14:08:00Z")
This sounds like something “everyone knows” but it doesn’t pass the smell test for me. Various guidelines recommend somewhere between 2 - 4 L of water per day. Given that you’re in a survival situation, let’s take the lower limit of this to start off with. 1 L of water is 1 kg and it takes 334 kJ to melt 1 kg of snow and then another 154 kJ to warm it to body temperature or ~500 kJ which is 120 calories. So eating snow is going to cost you about 240 calories which is about 10% more than your daily baseline, hardly anything that seems dangerous. Put it another way, you see people all the time munch through a cup or two of ice that’s leftover at the bottom of their cups at restaurants. That’s really no different from trying to eat snow to remain hydrated but nobody is worried that people at fast food restaurants are suddenly going to keel over from hypothermia. I’m going to put this one down as a silly myth unless someone can provide a reliable cite to the contrary. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2014, 2:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-you-shouldnt-eat-snow-a-question-for-our-warm-weather-members/689524/26 "2014-05-29T14:12:19Z")
People in fast food restaurants aren’t out in the cold wilds and have likely just, you know, eaten a calorie-heavy meal. The supposition here is that you’re in a survival situation. Very different situations. ---
**Author:** ![HoneyBadgerDC](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/honeybadgerdc/32/1033_2.png) [@HoneyBadgerDC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HoneyBadgerDC)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2014, 2:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-you-shouldnt-eat-snow-a-question-for-our-warm-weather-members/689524/27 "2014-05-29T14:18:32Z")
I would think the only reason might be is that it will lower your core temperature. ---
**Author:** ![Shalmanese](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/45deac/32.png) [@Shalmanese](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shalmanese)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2014, 2:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-you-shouldnt-eat-snow-a-question-for-our-warm-weather-members/689524/28 "2014-05-29T14:19:02Z")
> [@MrDibble](#): > > People in fast food restaurants aren’t out in the cold wilds and have likely just, you know, eaten a calorie-heavy meal. The supposition here is that you’re in a survival situation. Very different situations. Eating a cup of ice will lower your body temperature by a whopping 0.1C (0.2F). If that’s really the difference between you getting hypothermia or not, then the ice was not the problem. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2014, 2:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-you-shouldnt-eat-snow-a-question-for-our-warm-weather-members/689524/29 "2014-05-29T14:23:17Z")
Well, no. The point is not to exacerbate the actual problem (the “I am stranded in a snowstorm” problem) ---
**Author:** ![Shalmanese](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/45deac/32.png) [@Shalmanese](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shalmanese)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2014, 2:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-you-shouldnt-eat-snow-a-question-for-our-warm-weather-members/689524/30 "2014-05-29T14:32:36Z")
> [@MrDibble](#): > > Well, no. The point is not to exacerbate the actual problem (the “I am stranded in a snowstorm” problem) Yes, but unless there’s evidence to show that it actually exacerbates the problem, I’m going to assume the entire rigamarole with a pot and melting snow is just an urban legend because the basic laws of science state that ingesting ice simply doesn’t have that big an effect on the human body. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2014, 2:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-you-shouldnt-eat-snow-a-question-for-our-warm-weather-members/689524/31 "2014-05-29T14:58:44Z")
> [@Shalmanese](#): > > Yes, but unless there’s evidence to show that it actually exacerbates the problem I’d say _any_ avoidable negative temp drop is going to exacerbate the problem. 2 degrees below normal is hypothermia. So this is a case where _any_ drop is bad. And cite for the 0.1 degree figure? ---
**Author:** ![GreasyJack](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/df705f/32.png) [@GreasyJack](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GreasyJack)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2014, 3:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-you-shouldnt-eat-snow-a-question-for-our-warm-weather-members/689524/32 "2014-05-29T15:22:38Z")
> [@Shalmanese](#): > > 1 L of water is 1 kg and it takes 334 kJ to melt 1 kg of snow and then another 154 kJ to warm it to body temperature or ~500 kJ which is 120 calories. So eating snow is going to cost you about 240 calories which is about 10% more than your daily baseline, hardly anything that seems dangerous. You also need to account for the energy to warm the snow up to the freezing point, although that usually won’t add too much. I agree with you though that “never eat snow” shouldn’t be a dogmatic survival rule along the lines of “don’t drink salt water.” There’s plenty of cold-weather survival situations where hypothermia isn’t an issue and you’d be doing yourself more of a disservice by dehydrating yourself. ---
**Author:** ![Malthus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/85f322/32.png) [@Malthus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malthus)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2014, 3:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-you-shouldnt-eat-snow-a-question-for-our-warm-weather-members/689524/33 "2014-05-29T15:25:12Z")
I’m going to guess this is a “your are already hovering on the brink of hypothermia” issue. Canadian cross-country skiier here - I have drunk nearly-frozen water lots of times, without any concern about hypothermia - but then, I was usually very warm from exercise. I would not eat snow because it is not very thirst-quenching, it takes a lot of snow to make a small amount of water. But I would drink water from the springs at my dad’s cottage, which was very close to freezing. On a side issue, we have a friend whose brother is married to a lady in Thailand, where he now lives; she has never been outside of Thailand and has expressed an interest in visiting Canada during the winter, in terms that indicates she has all sorts of romantic notions about winter and snow here, no doubt gleaned from movies - I don’t think it has been adequately explained to her just how very cold it gets here. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Rachellelogram](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rachellelogram/32/8689_2.png) [@Rachellelogram](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rachellelogram)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2014, 3:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-you-shouldnt-eat-snow-a-question-for-our-warm-weather-members/689524/34 "2014-05-29T15:26:22Z")
I did this exercise, except it was about a plane crash in the desert. I remember the most important item was the lady’s cosmetic mirror and the least important item was the vodka. I guess it might save my life one day! ---
**Author:** ![Quercus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/7ab992/32.png) [@Quercus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quercus)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2014, 5:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-you-shouldnt-eat-snow-a-question-for-our-warm-weather-members/689524/35 "2014-05-29T17:03:39Z")
> [@GreasyJack](#): > > You also need to account for the energy to warm the snow up to the freezing point, although that usually won’t add too much. > > I agree with you though that “never eat snow” shouldn’t be a dogmatic survival rule along the lines of “don’t drink salt water.” There’s plenty of cold-weather survival situations where hypothermia isn’t an issue and you’d be doing yourself more of a disservice by dehydrating yourself. Yeah, I’ve slept outside in below-zero (Farenheit) weather, and I think “never” is way too strong a word. Particulaly when the OP threw in non-survival situations at the end. It’s something to be aware of – 10% of energy can potentially make the difference in some cases – but hardly an absolute law. ---
**Author:** ![Kimballkid](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/b5a626/32.png) [@Kimballkid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimballkid)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2014, 7:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-you-shouldnt-eat-snow-a-question-for-our-warm-weather-members/689524/36 "2014-05-29T19:38:29Z")
> [@Battle\_Pope](#): > > I guess a similar thing for here is the overseas tourist who’s car breaks down while travelling in remote areas, who aren’t carrying extra water and try to walk out for help and don’t make it. > > Either another traveller will be along in a day or two and find the car and report it or the police/search & rescue find the car, usually within a day or two of the person being reported missing or overdue. Long before they find the corpse (if they do). > > If you stay with your car the chances of being found alive are far, far higher. > [@robert\_columbia](#): > > This is also a problem in many remote areas of the US, which does include areas between some major metropolitan areas. Silly Dutch tourists, you can’t just drive from NYC to LA for the weekend. It’s a several days journey with much of the western part of it going through hot, dry desert areas. Bring water. I’m so seriously. One should also not leave the car during a blizzard/snowstorm if you get stuck. Far easier to find the car (and thus you) than to find the car and then look for you. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2014, 7:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-you-shouldnt-eat-snow-a-question-for-our-warm-weather-members/689524/37 "2014-05-29T19:45:30Z")
Spaniard, no fucking idea. In fact, we’d often… well, eat isn’t quite the right word, but let snow melt in out mouth rather than drink from our canteens, during hikes on snowed-on mountains (you don’t need to take your gloves off to grab a small handful of snow). During snowstorms we mostly did our best to not be there; huddling in the bus singing _el señor conductor_ (“Mr Driver”, one of those songs you re-invent as you go) was definitely preferable to being out in the cold. ---
**Author:** ![TruCelt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/trucelt/32/523_2.png) [@TruCelt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TruCelt)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2014, 8:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-you-shouldnt-eat-snow-a-question-for-our-warm-weather-members/689524/38 "2014-05-29T20:01:49Z")
Here’s the thing, snow is mostly air, and it holds a lot of cold. There is very little water in a mouth full of snow. It’s like a drop. So the amount of cooling that you get far, far outweighs the benefit of the small amount of water that comes in. And it cools you from the inside, which vastly accelerates hypothermia. By the time you are cooled enough to feel any symptoms you are too far gone to reach the conclusion that you should probably stop eating snow now. And you will still be incredibly thirsty and so you’ll continue to eat snow as long as you can manage to scoop it into your mouth. Better to keep it in a bag in your pocket and drink it as it melts. When the baggie full of snow melts down to a half-sip of water this will all make more sense to you. ---
**Author:** ![Geek\_Mecha](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/ecae2f/32.png) [@Geek\_Mecha](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Geek_Mecha)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2014, 8:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-you-shouldnt-eat-snow-a-question-for-our-warm-weather-members/689524/39 "2014-05-29T20:14:27Z")
Hawaii/California. I learned to not eat snow and why from watching Man vs Wild. Side note: What I lack in experience with snow I make up with in experience with Icees and Slurpees. Brain freeze hurts, yo. ---
**Author:** ![Malthus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/85f322/32.png) [@Malthus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malthus)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2014, 8:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-you-shouldnt-eat-snow-a-question-for-our-warm-weather-members/689524/40 "2014-05-29T20:24:22Z")
> [@TruCelt](#): > > Here’s the thing, snow is mostly air, and it holds a lot of cold. There is very little water in a mouth full of snow. It’s like a drop. So the amount of cooling that you get far, far outweighs the benefit of the small amount of water that comes in. > > And it cools you from the inside, which vastly accelerates hypothermia. By the time you are cooled enough to feel any symptoms you are too far gone to reach the conclusion that you should probably stop eating snow now. And you will still be incredibly thirsty and so you’ll continue to eat snow as long as you can manage to scoop it into your mouth. > > Better to keep it in a bag in your pocket and drink it as it melts. When the baggie full of snow melts down to a half-sip of water this will all make more sense to you. From my experience, one doesn’t eat snow to quench one’s thirst, not because of hypotherma, but rather because it generally isn’t very thirst-quenching. As you note, it takes a lot of snow to make a little water. In short, I do not think it is dangerous, so much as futile. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-you-shouldnt-eat-snow-a-question-for-our-warm-weather-members/689524.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-you-shouldnt-eat-snow-a-question-for-our-warm-weather-members/689524.md?page=3)