Maybe it's a local thing, but a considerable number of the guys stopping there (it's pretty much the midpoint on a quite nice and highly popular round trip) are middle-aged, and clearly quite well off. So they eat well and ride expensive bikes...
It's just funny how many wannabee Eddy Merckxs seem immune to that truth, and we who grok it like to snicker when we hear discussions like the one cited.
500 grams is ~10 calories per day for a year, and 10 calories is 1/25th of a Snickers bar or about one eight of a potato.
Either way, he'd get the same effect has the extra $3500 would have, which was what I found amusing and why I mentioned it.