I'm not sure you'd ever want to eat the pod on a peanut honestly...ever. But some people are using the hulls as a mushroom growing substrate!! Most boiled peanuts are harvested earlier than roasting peanuts but both still have a pretty long growing season. This is where you get the 'green' peanut. It's harvested earlier and the hull of the bean has not yet fully darkened....but it's the hull not the shell. The shell to my knowledge is always hard and yuck to try to chew, more like a nut than a bean in that aspect....hence their name.