Drinking water while having a character with STARVATION status prevents the loss of life points. Every time we drink water we obtain the 3 ascending arrows, when we achieve this, we will see that in turn an ascending arrow also appears on the status of the life bar, thus preventing being able to die of starvation.

As an example: I manage to survive on the Namalsk map from the "Bering Outpost" to the island's military base with the giant ship stranded. They are almost 20 minutes running and I made them with 2 cocking pots and 4 bottles of water (melting the snow when the water ran out)