stillsexy

Big Mac machine
Man's 18,000th burger lands him in record book
By JESSE GARZA
of the Journal Sentinel staff
Last Updated: Nov. 11, 2001
Won't You Have Another?


Photo/Gary Porter
Donald Gorske takes a bite out of the 18,000th Big Mac he has eaten since 1972. The record-setting event took place last week at Fond du Lac High School.



If it's true that you are what you eat, Donald Gorske is "two all-beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions on a sesame seed bun."

Big Macs, the top-of-the-line burgers of the Golden Arches, have been the staple diet of the 47-year-old Fond du Lac prison guard since he wolfed down his first one in April 1972.

Every day for the past 29 years, Gorske has eaten at least two Big Macs, and last week - to the cheers of math students at Fond du Lac High School - he put down his 18,000th, enhancing his place in the Guinness book of records.

"It took a long time," Gorske said of his induction into Guinness. "But it's kind of nice having it there."

Fond du Lac High School was chosen as the backdrop for the milestone because of Gorske's involvement with teacher Tom Strauss' applied math classes. Over the years, students have calculated the specifics of Gorske's feat, such as figuring out the amounts of produce, grains and hamburger it would take to slap together all the Big Macs he's eaten since '72.

Their findings:

Since Gorske was 19 years old, he's consumed the equivalent of 800 heads of lettuce, 820 onions, 1,900 whole pickles, 563 pounds of cheese, almost 100 gallons of special sauce, 141/2 heads of beef and, most impressively, 6,250,000 sesame seeds.

To reach their conclusions, Strauss' students did things like slicing up pickles to get the average number of slices per pickle and calling up butchers to find out how many pounds of hamburger are in a head of beef.

"Math and algebra can be some pretty abstract stuff," said Strauss, who along with colleagues Christine Horbas and Paul Weisse developed Applied Math Made Easy in 1995.

"By doing fun activities like this kids don't ever have to ask the question, 'When are we ever going to get to use this stuff?' " he said.

Gorske's more than happy to help the students relate to math while pursuing his culinary passion. He rarely eats anything but Big Macs, though occasionally he'll eat fries and drink a Coke. After one month of marriage to his wife, Mary, he asked her to stop cooking so he could eat at Mickey D's. He skips traditional holiday meals and eats Big Macs for Thanksgiving and Christmas. He once got a Big Mac Attack while stuck in his house during an ice storm, so he now keeps a stash of Macs in his freezer for emergencies.

He's become an icon at the McDonald's on Military Ave. in Fond du Lac, where he said he's eaten about 17,000 Macs.

"They know me quite well in there," he said.

At 6 feet and 178 pounds, Gorske said he's healthy, energetic and rarely gets sick.

Strauss said Gorske had achieved cult-hero status among his students.

And Gorske, who claims to have eaten Big Macs in each of the 48 continental United States and inside every major-league baseball park in the nation, has no plans to change his eating habits.

"I can't see any reason why I would want to stop."

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