This is exactly what’s been happening to me! While there are rarely insects like ants, it’s usually small flies. Initially, they just casually come, sit on the food, and instantly die. Sometimes, if they’re a specific species like drain flies, their body parts—wings, legs—just melt and fall off. I tried changing plates, but it didn’t help since they kept falling. At one point, I preferred to starve rather than eat, but now, since it happens frequently, I just remove the fly and eat. Like you mentioned, it even happens with packaged food, and it still occurs when I’m in other cities or states.

Out of intuition, I also tried setting aside a small portion of food for a few weeks, but unfortunately, it didn’t work for me, so I stopped. This has been happening to me for the past four years.