system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: Can you consume coffee beans by cooking them (heating them in water)? Will they get soft and tender like other beans?
gpt
coffee beans aren't actually beans. They are the seed of an edible stone fruit (it has a pit, the coffee bean is the pit) known as "coffee cherry" or "coffee berry".

You can eat the pit raw but they taste bad and are much harder than when they are roasted. I'd presume you could boil them though there's no readily available information about that practice.