I think I speak for most viewers when I write that I didn't find most of this extreme and I learned valuable tips.
What's "extreme" on this show? Passing down clothes, even if you have a big family. Taking secondhand furniture that people leave on the curb, a common practice in every city and town. Turning waste into compost for your garden. Shopping at thrift stores. Haggling for a bargain. Just how sheltered, even spoiled, are you if you've never done any of these?
The show is obviously staged, with non actors being told to turn up their noses. And there's an appeal to the easily squeamish with phobias about the human body or germs. You know, the type that are horrified about shaking hands with a stranger.
Here they're told perfectly fine food hunted or gathered from the wild, or leftover from restaurants and groceries, what country people and homeless shelters routinely serve and eat, is yucky/icky/gross, the way a very picky finicky little kid or a germophobe would find it. It's not most people, but here they pretend it is.
It's too bad the producers are so intent on making empty materialism and conformity seem "normal." Not all of us fall for that.
