After Eating Over 35,000 Big Macs, How Much Has This McDonald's Superfan Spent On Burgers?

For over 50 years now, Don Gorske has dedicated, by his own estimates, upwards of 90% of his diet to McDonald's Big Mac. He first sampled the burger back in 1972, and while he couldn't have possibly understood back then exactly how large a part of his life the burger would become, it was immediately clear to him that his relationship with the Big Mac would be special. Hamburgers were his favorite food, and the Big Mac was the best burger he'd ever tasted, so he set about eating Big Macs every day.

In the beginning, he says, he was eating as many as nine Big Macs each day, though over the years that number tapered out to an average of about two. Over the ensuing decades, Gorske kept careful track of his consumption, not only making a tally, but also keeping both the receipts and the cardboard cartons in which Big Macs are served. As of March of 2025, he reached 35,000 Big Macs consumed, a Guinness World Record that is likely to stand for a long, long time — if not forever.

For most of us, the idea of adding up all of our food expenses over the past 50 years would be an impossible headache. But with Gorske's commitment to a single food item (and to tracking exactly how many he's had) we can easily determine a rough figure of how much money he has spent on the McDonald's Big Mac over the years.

To take a stab at Gorske's overall Big Mac bill, we have to make a lot of assumptions. For the sake of ease, for example, we are dividing those 35,000 burgers evenly over the 53 years between 1972 and 2025 — which is about 660 Big Macs per year or 1.81 each day. Additionally, price data over that time is incomplete, so we had to work with available numbers for our Big Mac price comparisons. Using the reported average prices and an assumed even rate of consumption each year, we calculated that Gorske may have spent about $95,000 on Big Macs between 1972 and 2025.

To break things down by decade, that is around $3,432 in the '70s, when Big Macs were only about $0.65 each; $10,560 in the '80s, as they climbed closer to two dollars; $16,170 in the '90s, when they reached about $2.45; $21,168 in the aughts, when things crossed the three-dollar mark; $27,588 in the 2010s, as the Big Mac rose to above $4; and $16,137 in the start of the 2020s, with a 2025 Big Mac cost reaching closer to upwards of $5. 

These numbers are, of course, far from perfect. Interestingly, though, the question may actually be quite a bit simpler if we look at inflation-adjusted costs rather than actual expenditure. As it turns out, the price of a Big Mac has risen pretty evenly with inflation over the years. $0.65 (the cost of a Big Mac in 1972) would be worth about $5.08 today, and the average cost of a Big Mac in 2026 is $5.17, accounting for a difference of less than 2%. If we accept that small difference, we can attempt to determine a figure that may be easier to interpret: the inflation-adjusted cost of 35,000 Big Macs.

Given that the price of the Big Mac has stayed relatively even with inflation over the past 54 years, we can easily calculate the inflation-adjusted cost of Gorske's 35,000 Big Macs. All we need to do is take the current price and multiply it by the number of sandwiches eaten, which gives an inflation-adjusted McDonald's bill of about $181,000. For a touch of perspective, that is only about half of the 2026 average house cost in the U.S. — not too bad for more than 50 years of daily burgers.

One confounding variable that we haven't mentioned, however, is the market in which the burgers are bought. Around 95% of McDonald's restaurants are run by franchisees, and they are responsible for setting their own prices — with the counsel of third-party pricing advisors. As a result, prices vary considerably, and Gorske lives in Wisconsin, a state where Big Mac prices are below the national average. The cost of a Big Mac in the Badger State is only about $4.59, which means that, if we assume that's where Gorske purchased the burgers, his inflation-adjusted bill could be as low as $160,650.

One might think that after Gorske crossed the 35,000 mark, McDonald's PR executives might reach out and help him financially with his burger legacy, but they have not. To this day, he buys every Big Mac himself, and says that he still looks forward to eating them every day. Indeed, in March of 2026, Gorske's tally is closing on 36,000, and he shows no signs of slowing. He has previously stated that he intends to eat daily Big Macs all the way to his deathbed, and then have his son buy him one more for the next journey.