Ah sure I see what you're saying. And you can definitely bring all the ingredients separate (you bring cans of tomatoes and tomato paste and wet foods? Bringing whole tomaotes in your backpack is something I've never heard of, thats heavy, wet messy, and also more inportantly not shelf stable. And canned shelf stable tomatoes are soo heavy and lots of trash to carry out) and cook everything and add dehydrated meat into it, but that's a ton more work out in nature and burns way more fuel than just prepping at home and then heating up water for almost instant chili on trail. When I'm in nature I want to spend my time enjoying nature not lugging around cans and a can opener, spending an hour plus prepping and cooking a meal. Dehydrated meals take about 15min to rehydrate and you get the quality food that you had a whole real kitchen to prepare.