Kopi Luwak aromatic civet coffee spread from locals to Dutch plantation owners and soon became their favourite, yet because of its rarity and unusual process, the civet coffee was expensive even during the colonial era. "Kopi" is the Indonesian word for coffee. "Luwak" is a local name of the Asian palm civet in Sumatra. Palm civets are primarily frugivorous, feeding on berries and pulpy fruits such as figs and palms. Civets also eat small vertebrates, insects, ripe fruits and seeds. Producers of the coffee beans argue that the process may improve coffee through two mechanisms, selection and digestion. Selection occurs as the
Organic beans are consumed as immature pods. Dry and snap beans also differ from soybeans ("Glycine max"), in which the seeds are consumed in a variety of processed forms such as tofu, soybean meal, oil, and fermented forms such as miso. Dry beans are divided into classes with a range of seed sizes, colors, and shapes. Examples include black beans, pintos, navy beans, small red beans, and kidney beans. Soybeans are usually divided into two groups, feed-grade and food-grade, with the food-grade including soybeans for processing, "tofu-beans", and edamame, the latter of which is eaten as immature beans. To sell beans as