'Best Thing I Ever Ate': WI Man Has Eaten 34,000 Big Macs Since 1973
FOND DU LAC, WI — Don Gorske’s record is safe — as if it was ever in jeopardy.
The Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, man has again claimed the Guinness World Records title for the most McDonald’s Big Macs eaten in a lifetime, swelling his count to more than 34,000 burgers after eating 728 more of the signature sandwiches last year.
Now 70, the retired prison security guard has all the original sandwich wrappers and boxes in a veritable Big Mac museum in his home. When he sunk his teeth into a Big Mac for the first time on May 17, 1972, it was love at first bite.
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“It was the best thing I ever ate in my life,” and nothing since has come close, Gorske told Patch in a 2016 interview as he reflected on the death of Michael “Jim” Delligatti, the man who invented the gastronomic extravagance that is a staple on the McDonald’s menu.
It was so good Gorske saw no reason to eat anything else. He gave Burger King’s Whopper a try, but it was no match for “two all beef patties, special sauce lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions on a sesame seed bun.”
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“When I like something, I stick with it all the time,” he told Guinness.
Gorske’s health hasn’t betrayed him — which often comes as a surprise to people who are aware of his fondness for the sandwich.
“Many people thought I’d be dead by now but instead I’ve been a record holder for my 24th year – one of Guinness World Records’ longer-running record holders, so that’s pretty cool to me,” he told Guinness.
His secret? He skips the french fries, walks 6 miles a day, and has the right constitution for such a high calorie and high fat sandwich. His cholestrol is within healthy ranges, and he gets a wellness check every year.
“I’m a very active person — hyperactive, you might say,” Gorske told Patch in 2016. “I use a lot of energy every day, so whatever calories I’m taking in, I’m using up. I do enough hard work and consider myself in pretty good shape.”
His mother extracted a promise from him when his long relationship with the Big Mac began.
“Out of respect to my mother, from 1973 to 1981, I ate one non-Big Mac meal a day because she was worried about my health,” he told Guinness World Records. “On April 1, 1981, she let me relinquish that promise when she said, ‘If they haven’t killed you by now, go ahead.’ ”
Gorske used to eat up to nine a day, but now curbs his enthusiasm for the sandwich to lunch and dinner. The only other foods he regularly eats are an occasional evening snack of ice cream, potato chips or a fruit bar.
Gorske often ate his Big Macs at the Military Road McDonald’s in Fond du Lac. He’s not just known there, he has his own booth, and the wall beside it is graced with his picture. It’s a spot more special than the sandwich sauce. Before the McDonald’s restaurant was torn down and replaced with a new building, the exact spot where the booth is located was the parking space where he proposed to his wife, Mary, in 1975.
“She has put up with a lot of obsessive-compulsive things I do and hasn’t let my Big Mac thing get to her,” Gorske told Guinness.
These days, Gorske buys Big Macs twice a week. He eats a fresh one at the restaurant, then takes the rest home so he can microwave them when he’s hungry.
“I love microwaved Big Macs,” he declared in 2016. “No one loves microwaved Big Macs like I do.”
Gorske has gained so much celebrity over the years — besides the Guinness record first sealed in 1999, he has been featured in the documentaries “Super Size Me” (2004) and “Don Gorske: Mac Daddy” (2005), is the author of “22,477 Big Macs” (2008), has appeared on television game shows and has been interviewed dozens of times — that his diet no longer raises eyebrows around Fond du Lac.
In all these years, Big Macs have not failed to disappoint.
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“People who have watched me eating a Big Mac often comment that I look like I’m eating one for the very first time,” Gorske told Guinness.
Gorske is not too worried about losing his status as a record-holder.
“Even if someone started now, I’ll be dead before they could match it,” he told Patch in 2016. “And they’re going to have to be obsessive-compulsive if they’re not going to eat anything else. ….”
Gorske said at the time he was loathe to even suggest it, noting that not everyone’s metabolism is geared for such a diet.
“I wouldn’t want someone else to have a heart attack,” he said
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