A man in Wisconsin has just eaten his 30,000th Big Mac

Ever since it first arrived on the fast food scene, the world has obsessed over the Big Mac.

It’s a sandwich that has no right to work and yet manages to tick every burger box there is. Three slices of bread should be completely impractical. Gherkins should ruin everything. Burger sauce should make a hot sticky mess. Somehow, the junk food wizards at McDonald’s HQ have found a way to bring the whole lot together and pull of the calorific coup of the century. The world hasn’t been the same since.

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It’s fair to say that despite near universal success, the Big Mac has had its detractors over the years.

This is hardly surprising, given the fact that the sandwich contains 540 calories, a whopping 43% of your daily allowance of fat and enough salt to cure a ham. This has caused health fanatics to brand the Big Mac as the biggest risk to American waistlines on the market. On the surface, it’s tough to argue with them.

However, one Maccies super fan has decided to stand in the face of science and prove the haters wrong. Since May 1972, now retired prison guard Don Gorske has spent his spare time relentlessly gorging on the restaurant’s signature sandwich, sticking two fingers up to health nuts in the process. During his 46-year binge, he has only failed to eat a Big Mac on eight days, most of which were not by choice.

There are die hard McDonald’s fans, and then there’s Don Gorske.

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In 2016, Gorske, who looks like a cross between John Lennon and fast food Jesus, was honoured in the Guinness Book of World Records as having eaten the most Big Macs on earth – with a whopping 28,788. Now, two years and 1,212 sandwiches later, he is claiming to have completed his 30,000th helping of beefy, bready goodness. In an apt twist of fate, he returned to the very restaurant where he got his first taste of the burger as an 18-year-old whippersnapper to complete the mission.

Speaking to local newspaper the Fond du Lac Reporter, Gorske admitted that the milestone had been playing on his mind. “This one is a biggie for me, something I have been looking forward to.” Despite already being established as the world leader in Big Mac munching, Gorske’s attitude clearly shows that he wants to set a benchmark that cannot be beaten.

His path to fast food immortality has not been straightforward. In order to prove beyond any doubt that he does indeed love Big Macs more than anyone else on earth, Gorske has been collecting and storing an archive of containers and receipts, documenting his journey to greatness. Though the current mountain of remains scattered throughout his house is quite something to behold, it was once even more impressive. In 1990, disaster struck when a tornado blew away more than 7,000 styrofoam containers. It’s not all been plain sailing.

Though there are many who will be astonished that someone who’s more burger than man is still standing, Gorske insists that his health has never been better. He regularly checks his blood pressure and cholesterol levels and is well within the healthy range for both. Though this news will no-doubt confound naysayers, Gorske’s story makes one thing very clear. The Big Mac might not be the evil doing food baddie that we all thought.