In Israel, most meals include salat katzutz — a salad of chopped fresh vegetables. At breakfast, the salad is accompanied by eggs, olives, cheese, and fresh bread or pita, served with various spreads such as hummus, labneh and baba ganoush. Many families eat communally, dipping into shared bowls of the spreads and other sides.

In many parts of the world, crêpes are a snack or dessert. But in South India, crêpe-like pancakes called dosas are traditionally served at breakfast. Made from a fermented batter of rice and black lentils (or urad dal), dosas are thin and crispy. When filled with a curried potato mix, they are known as masala dosa (shown here). Another common breakfast food is idli, a soft, steamed cake also made from fermented rice and lentils. Both dosas and idlis are dipped in sides like fresh coconut chutney and sambar, a piquant, coriander-infused vegetable broth, then served alongside frothy South Indian coffee.

The breakfast meal in Ethiopia varies from region to region, but it usually consists of a grain-based dish flavored with berbere (a complex blend of chile peppers, ginger, fenugreek and other spices). One particularly hearty Ethiopian breakfast dish is chechebsa (meaning “broken” in the Oromo language) — a combination of small pieces of fried flatbread doused with nit’ir qibe (a clarified butter that’s simmered with fenugreek, cumin, coriander, turmeric, cardamom, cinnamon and sometimes nutmeg before straining). Chechebsa might be served with honey and yogurt, as well as a steaming cup of macchiato.

Nigerians enjoy heavy breakfasts, such as egg stew, a particular favorite in Lagos. Scrambled eggs are cooked in palm oil (a dark red oil made from the nuts of a palm tree) with diced tomatoes, onions and green peppers. Served alongside sweet, fried plantains and washed down with fresh pineapple juice, this meal keeps diners full for hours and then yearning for more. Many people who have spent time in Nigeria say that once you’ve been there, everything else — food and life — just seems a bit bland.

One of the most popular breakfasts in China is called “century egg and lean pork congee” (in Chinese, that’s 皮蛋瘦肉粥 or pidan shourou zhou). Congee is a rice porridge, and the century egg is the product of a unique curing process believed to have been accidentally discovered in the Ming Dynasty (1368–1644). Today, century eggs are usually duck eggs that have been cured for about 100 days in a concoction that includes lime, tea and salt. For this breakfast dish, the eggs are shelled and diced, then cooked with shredded pork, scallion and ginger and added to the rice porridge.

Many Ghanaian meals are heavy on starch, with dishes like fufu or gari (both made from cassava) accompanying a sauce or soup. For breakfast, starch takes center stage in the form of fried cassava chips — similar to french fries but a bit more dense. The star fruit is in season most of the year — the greener the fruit, the more tart, so the yellow variety is usually sweet (but with an edge). Drinking coconut milk straight from the coconut is refreshing enough that you might skip morning coffee.

In Sweden, pannenkoeken (Dutch-style pancakes) are served any time of day — either as a savory dish, stuffed with ingredients like prosciutto (Italian ham) and goat cheese, or as a sweet, served alongside fresh fruit or with ice cream, jam and syrup.