Once you have boiling water you might as well add pasta, make tea, drop in an egg, pour some of it into the foil container of freeze-dried food ...

Several historians noted that the Chinese crews working on the railroads were preferred by bosses in part because they got sick less often and held up better to the hard conditions. It was noted that European workers would often drank directly from streams and ditches. Whereas the Chinese tended to take their water in the form of tea.