This just doesn't make sense to me. There are a great number of beans and vegetables that taste bitter or unpleasant "raw" but are very delicious with a bit of heat and time.
If you don't think it makes sense, then don't do it. There's no reason to argue with people who in their subjective experience have enjoyed it.
People do eat tea leaves (matcha for example, or Burmese pickled tea leaf salad). But a dry spoonful wouldn't be a good way to get a feel for a given tea, I agree.
you just drink water which has super small ground up coffee particles in it...
Even the oft-maligned Nescafe is pleasant for me if I make it correctly. Not the original formula, but the 100% coffee one without the extra ingredients. I thought it tasted horrible when I first tried it, but if I drowned it in a lot of soy milk it actually made for a fairly pleasant drink.
In general, people are going to be happier if they stop trying to cultivate aristocratic aversions to common food, and instead start cultivating curiosity and an interest in finding ways to enjoy things they didn't expect themselves to enjoy.
a wise old friend of mine once said "you think you like chocolate, but what you actually like is sugar in cocoa"
I've never had a coffee bean that taste bad on its own, but tasted good in coffee. Similarly, every coffee bean that tasted good brewed, also tasted good on its own.
There’s a difference in taste between dark‑roast beans from Starbucks vs medium‑roast beans from your local coffee roaster.