57-year-old Don Gorske ate his first Big Mac 39 years ago, to celebrate buying a new car. He was hooked and on that same day he went back and ate eight more before the McDonalds restaurant closed. On May 17 2011, he ate his 25,000th Big Mac.
The retired prison guard planned to eat his 25,000 Big Mac in the same restaurant, in the same day and at the xact same hour he ate his first heart-stopping burger. The McDonald’s in his home town of Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, celebrated the event by organizing a ceremony for their most loyal customer, and posted a sign beneath the logo’s golden arches that said “Congrats Don Gorske 25000 Big Macs.” Before biting into the burger, he said “It’s been seven years since 20,000. Same thing goes this year folks. You can’t have the carton and it probably still takes 16 bites for me to finish a Big Mac.”
Gorske fell in love with the Big Mac in 1972, when he walked into the local McDonald’s and bought three burgers to celebrate buying a car. He loved them so much that he came back to the restaurant twice that day, and ate a total of nine before it closed down. “I plan on eating Big Macs until I die,” he said. “I have no intentions of changing. It’s still my favorite food. Nothing has changed in 39 years. I look forward to it every day.” Throughout the nearly four decades since he started eating Big Macs, he’s only gone eight days without his favorite meal. One of the reasons he skipped a day was to grant his mother a dying wish, and the last day without a Big Mac was on Thanksgiving 2000, when he forgot to stock up and McDonald’s was closed for the holiday.
Photo by AP
Don Gorske says he buys six Big Macs on Monday and eight on Thursday, so he doesn’t have to go to a fast food restaurant all the time, freezes or refrigerates them and warms them up when he wants to eat. He usually eats two burgers a day, but strangely enough, he is not obese and has a cholesterol level of 140. That’s probably because he never eats those greasy french fries and doesn’t drink the sugary soda. Still doctors don’t recommend his fast food diest and are concerned he’s not eating enough fresh vegetables and fruits.
The Big Mac fan says he also has a thing for numbers and counting things and that the fact McDonald’s displays how many burgers were served on a sign inspired him to keep track of his Big Mac record. He has also collected most of the Big Mac boxes he bought and kept nearly every receipt. Gorske remembers many of the important events in his life in connection to how many Big Mac burgers he ate at the time; for example he recalls he met his wife Mary at 1,146 Big Macs and married her at 2,025.
via AP
