There are over 30,000 McDonald's restaurants on Earth

There are over 30,000 McDonald's restaurants on Earth, and they serve approximately 47 million people per day - that could feed everyone in the state of New York twice in once day with enough left over for everyone in New Jersey (that's a lot of happy meals).


McDonald's can be found everywhere, in malls and shopping centers, chain discount department stores, airports and even hospitals (I lived across the street from a hospital that had a 24 hour McDonald's; we would walk over in the middle of the night and grab happy meals... such rebels...I'm surprised we were never stopped by security).

Don Gorske of Wisconsin has eaten 23,000 Big Macs in the last 36 years. He eats a steady two Big Macs per day, and weighs a mere 185 lbs (really? How is that fair?). Not only that, according to the 2004 documentary, Super Size Me ( I recently watched it on Hulu, which is like YouTube, on steroids) Gorske's cholesterol is at a healthy level (again, really? I eat salad like it's my job and mine is sky-high...maybe he is on to something).


A Big Mac is 540 calories and 29 grams of fat, which means Gorske consumed 12,420,000 calories and 667,000 grams of fat from Big Macs in the last 36 years (how is he not obese?).

I'm not a big fast food eater, unless:

1. It's realllly late at night and I'm starrrrving
2. It's really late at night and I've been drinking
3. I am attempting to recover from a long night out with a dose of grease - nothing beats a sports drink and french fries to cure a hangover
   

I guess the key for normal people is to enjoy fast food, like everything else in life, in moderation.

That includes you, Grimace.

This post was inspired by Super Size Me, which taught me that eating McDonald's for 30 days straight with minimal exercise will, in fact, make you fat. Duh.