It is only five hours since everyone got to bed but a group of friends are in a Madrid cafe eating churros and drinking coffee - carbohydrate and caffeine. That's the traditional breakfast in Spain. Meanwhile, in Tokyo, four-year-old Shuta Abe is tucking into pickled plums, egg roll, radish, steamed broccoli and fried tofu. In Pristina, capital of Kosovo, a serious-looking family group discuss politics and the revolution over chicken, meat and noodle soup. In Brazil it's tapioca pancakes and juice made from the deep purple assai fruit that grow in the garden, while over in New York lawyer Trisha Smith starts the day with home-delivered 40/30/30 carbohydrate/protein/fat tomato parmesan frittata. It's 8am across the world and OFM presents a global journey of the world's breakfast tables.

8am: Madrid

'It's too early for breakfast,' announced Antonio Romero, manager of La Taurina, a picturesque bar close to the Puerta del Sol in the heart of Madrid. It was shortly after 8am and he was only partly joking - although punters were lined up at the long marble bar, the most popular hour for breakfast in Madrid is 10 to 11am, when office workers pour out for coffee,toast and sweet buns.

At 8am, the streets of central Madrid are unusually quiet: traffic flows freely without the normal symphony of hooting, people walk purposefully but silently and only the city's many bars are open for business. As in La Taurina, the atmosphere is muted - televisions are on in the background but there is none of the raucous chatter that pervades every other Spanish mealtime.

'I always have breakfast out - coffee with milk and a croissant, between 8 and 9am, depending on my day,' said Andres Daganzo, who works for a chemical company. 'I get up at 6.30am, so it would be a bit early to eat with the family, but anyway, it's not normal here to have breakfast at home.'

As in most bars, the menu at La Taurina offers three basic breakfasts: 1. coffee with rolls, toast or churros for 210 pesetas(about 80 pence); 2. coffee, beer or wine with assorted sandwiches for 250 pesetas; or 3. coffee, beer or wine with tortilla sandwiches for 275 pesetas. A glass of freshly squeezed orange juice is yours for 100 ptas extra.

Emma Daly

8am: Belem, Brazil

The basis of Amazonian cuisine is a type of cassava, known in Brazil as manioc. At breakfast time manioc is eaten in two forms: in a dried powder or in tapioca pancakes. Paulo Amorin, who lives with his wife and two children in Belem, likes to sprinkle white powdered manioc in his sweetened coffee. 'The manioc stays crunchy and its savoury flavour offsets the coffee,' he says. Manioc dough is bought from the supermarket and then kneaded into a tapioca pancake. These white pancakes can either be served cold or cooked. If you use a log fire then they are cooked on banana leaves. The cooked pancakes are called biju and eaten with various fillings, such as coconut or margarine.

Paulo has made a compÀte of cupuassu, which is a sweet, orange-coloured fruit and grows in his garden. Another fruit which grows in his garden is assai. Assai juice is drunk almost religiously all through the day by the inhabitants of Belem. Paulo takes the dark purple fruit from the tree and then mashes it. He sieves the pulp to get rid of the skin and drinks it in a traditional wooden cuia bowl. 'Assai is very nutritious,' he says. Also on the table are pupunha, a pink fruit that turns yellow and savoury once boiled, and maize couscous.

Alex Bellos

8am: Pristina

This morning's breakfast in the Zogiani household in Kosovo is soup, a mix of chicken, meat and noodles bought from a local shop, thrown into some water with some seasoning and left to simmer. 'I like to eat something hot,' says 36-year-old Omer sitting back on a sofa in the darkly lit kitchen, as his wife Zhefkije stands over the food. Their seven-year-old daughter Donika, the youngest in the family, sits at the table slowly reading aloud from a school textbook. Their three boys aged 10 to 14 are playing in a next-door room.

Breakfast varies according to the time of year. In summer it's milk and white cheese, and perhaps stewed red peppers mixed with cream. In winter, if the Zogianis can afford the meat, they make stew. Otherwise they eat white beans, soaked in water for a day and then cooked on the stove. Soft white bread is used to mop up what's left in the bowl or plate. On special occasions Zhefkije will a make a dish called flee, a traditional Albanian dish made of rolls of pastry combined with milk and butter which takes hours to cook. There's little distinction between what food is eaten at which meal, and it is nearly always washed down afterwards with a sweet glass of tea. Omer lights up a cigarette before and after eating. Nicholas Wood

8am: Berlin

'Although it's not always possible for me to fit breakfast into my day, I consider it very important,' says Karina Kellermann, 47, Professor of Medieval German literature who lives in Berlin. 'It's a great time to meet friends and chat to them, when you're feeling fresh, about the world in general as well as personal lives and problems. Then afterwards you go to work feeling wonderfully uplifted.

'When I breakfast alone I love reading the paper - I buy only one newspaper a week and ration myself to different bits every day so that it lasts me the whole week. If I miss breakfast I notice it for the whole day because I don't eat lunch. If necessary I can miss out the food, but I can never go without my cup of black tea. A quick breakfast would last about 15 minutes, but if I do it thoroughly, we're talking around about an hour. The light is also important for me. I like to be where there is lots of natural light rather than relying on an artificial source.'

On the cafÀ menu today: Black Forest ham, Italian salami, a young Gouda cheese, jam, honey, wholewheat bread rolls, dark rolls, young farm-boy rolls, sesame rolls, a few pastries - all of which were bought from the local supermarket and the local bakery.

Kate Connolly

8am: Tokyo

Reflecting a philosophy in which variety is not only considered the spice of life, but a vital factor for health, Yuko Abe, a full-time housewife living in Urayasu - just outside Tokyo - has prepared no less than 10 dishes for her husband, Hideyo, and four-year-old son, Shuta.

She swears it took just 30 minutes to rustle up a feast for the eye as well as for the stomach. Plump pink ume-boshi (pickled plums) share a crowded table with yellow egg roll, white-shredded daikon radish, green steamed broccoli with beige strips of fried tofu, cloudy brown miso soup, green and pink pickled radish, grilled smelt (head and all) and, of course, a bowl of white rice.

Pride of place, however, goes to the contents of a large brown bowl in the centre of the table, which contains a rice gruel boiled in Japanese tea. This Abe family recipe, which has been passed down the generations, is a breakfast staple that keeps the suburban family in touch with their country roots in distant Wakayama. It also serves as a hangover cure when Hideyo has overdone the sake - which is not toallt unusual - the previous night. Don Watts

8am: Jerusalem

Israelis love to spend long hours languishing around the kitchen table talking politics and religion, but breakfast is usually a swift affair of 10 to 15 minutes. As the sun rises over the old city walls of Jerusalem, Ofra Rotem wakes up and makes her way to the kitchen - the heart of her household. Here she begins to prepare breakfast for her husband and four school-going children who are still fast asleep. By the time they arrive at the table, a large pot of fresh mint tea is sitting in the centre of the table and the Arabic coffee pot is brewing on the gas stove.

The children munch on cereal served with milk or yogurt. Plain bread is livened up with a spoonful of cottage cheese or fruit jam made from the pickings of Ofra's garden, which is heaving with lemons, grapefruit, cherries, figs and pomegranates. If there is some left over from the day before, hummus - a mixture of mashed chickpeas, garlic, lemon and tahina, a sesame-based sauce - can also find a place on the breakfast table. No breakfast is complete without a large bowl of finely chopped cherry tomatoes, cucumbers, onions and parsley tossed together and drenched in olive oil, a mainstay of the Israeli kitchen.

Virginia Quirke

8am: New York

For most New Yorkers breakfast is a chore. They work out and work hard, but if they could do without eating altogether they probably would. Trisha Smith is no exception. An Environmental Associate with the law firm Sidley Austin Brown & Wood, Trisha discovered the power breakfast to top them all. The Zone is a home-delivered gourmet diet tailored to suit her individual preferences. Every day by 6am she wakes to find three freshly prepared meals and two snacks at her doorstep. All meals promise a precise 40/30/30 carbohydrate/protein/fat ratio and come in microwavable plastic containers. One of the main ingredients is a surprise. Trisha doesn't know what she'll be eating until she opens the delivery bag. Yesterday she had an oat bran muffin with yogurt. Today it's off to the library with a tomato parmesan frittata with melon salad.

Jonathan Wald

8am: Nairobi

Finger millet is being harvested in western Kenya, so Rachael Oguto has travelled 300 miles to make breakfast for her husband Robert in Nairobi. As head of the family, he must taste the crop first. Rachael soaks the millet flour - ground at the family farmstead near Lake Victoria - in water for two days, to turn it slightly sour. Then, at 7am in one of Nairobi's better shanties, she ladles it into water boiling on a charcoal stove. After a few minutes, uji , or 'African tea', is ready.

'Sometimes we take bread and tea - we have become a bit Westernised,' says Robert, who works as a driver in the Kenyan capital. 'But if you want a strong breakfast, you have to have uji.' He washes his hands in a basin held by his 13-year-old daughter, Ruth, takes a good gulp of the sloppy, orange porridge; and declares it 'perfectly fine'.

James Astill

8am: Gembong, West Java

It would not be exaggerating to say Rohya's life revolves around breakfast. She gets up at 3am every day to start preparing the meal, not only for herself, her husband and two sons but also much of this working-class village 35 miles west of the capital Jakarta.

For Rohya, 50, runs the one food stall in Gembong, where dozens of people and small children grab a bite before starting the morning shift in one of the several nearby factories in this industrial belt of West Java, or heading out towards the rice fields.

The menu rarely varies. 'We are poor, simple people here,' she says while sprinkling some prawn crackers on a plate of boiled rice mixed with a few nuggets of garlic, onion and herbs. 'Most of the village cannot afford anything more than this.' Those who do have a few more coins in their pockets have the chance to splash out on some fried tofu or mixed vegetables. 'I usually mix together spinach, long beans, chillies, salt, pepper, garlic and shallots,' said Rohya, who inherited the stall from her mother. 'They are then fried in oil.'

Other snacks on offer include banana fritters made with a plain rice flour batter, simple cakes made from sticky rice and cassava deep-fried in the rice flour and sago mixture. All are wrapped in newspaper fliers for the local supermarket, ironically plastered in adverts for goods such as Florida Fresh Tangerine Juice that are well beyond the reach of anyone in Gembong.

John Aglion

8am: Rambouillet, France

In the sleepy residential town of Rambouillet, half an hour on the commuter train from Paris, the Capello family is tucking into breakfast. It's a Sunday, so HÀlÀne has no school run to worry about and can enjoy breakfast with her husband, Tonio, and their three boys - Paul, 11, Mathieu, eight, and Laurent, seven. The smallest member of the family, Plouf - a black terrier - keenly eyes a bowl of Choco Krispies.

The classic Gallic breakfast familiar to anyone who has ever stayed in a French hotel (the baguette-and-butter, tartine, plus the inevitable croissant washed down with cafÀ au lait) bears little resemblance to most French families' early-morning fare. Few, these days, have time for a trip to the patisserie before work, which explains the fast-growing popularity of that Anglo-Saxon import, the breakfast cereal.

The average Parisian will skip breakfast entirely on weekdays, or at most indulge in a shot of expresso and a quick Gauloise, perhaps topped up with another coffee and a pastry at the bar of the cafÀ opposite their office. But outside the big cities, breakfast is a sturdier affair.

'My father comes from just outside Toulouse, and he'll have bread, cheese and a glass of wine to start the day,' says HÀlÀne.

Kate Thirlwall

8am: NamaKwaland

Breakfast starts almost as soon as the sun comes up in Nourivier, a small village in South Africa, just south of Namibia. The jikko must be lit and Auntie Toes now prepares the breakfast of soft porridge made from white miele meal (maize flour), which is the staple food in this region. It's very rare to have anything as grand or expensive as bread or jam and the pot stays on the jikko all day, only coming off when the chai - tea - goes on.

Matt Small

8am: Moscow

Russian breakfast is not a gourmet experience. People are concerned primarily to eat quickly and substantially, packing in heavy, calorie-rich food to ward off the cold. Salami, curd cheese, eggs, porridge and bread are combined with any supper left over from the evening before. It's not a particularly sociable occasion either - families are hurrying to work and to school; they find time to sit down together in the evening. A heavy night of drinking might be followed by a glass of salted water poured from the jar containing pickled cucumbers - a well-tested Russian hangover cure - accompanied by a shot of vodka as hair of the dog.

Ekaterina Arutseva, a child psychologist, prepares supper for her son, Timothy, nine, and her husband, a ceramicist, before they leave for the school where they all work. 'It's very rare that we manage to sit down together for breakfast, because we're always in a rush trying to get ready for school. But it's still a friendly occasion. We let the rabbit, Sebastian, out of his hutch to run around the kitchen, we turn on the radio, and my husband has a quiet cigarette in the corner. I make oat porridge - kasha - which is easy. If there's any food left over from supper, then I might fry that up - bits of macaroni or potato. The rabbit eats cabbage. I like to drink tea imported from the West, because the Russian variety isn't very good. We eat jam or honey in teaspoonfuls from a saucer with the tea to sweeten it.

My son would like to have the Cornflakes advertised on television, but they cost a lot.' Amelia Gentleman

8am: China

Every market day, Wang Zerong (65), Wu Chifa (49) and Liu Anyou (46) meet for breakfast in this tiny riverside restaurant in Longhua, a small country town in southern Sichuan. They eat warm flower beancurd, dipped in a spicy dip made with Sichuanese chilli and broad bean paste, and slices of cold, aromatic stewed pork, with a scattering of ground chillies, Sichuan pepper and spring onions. They accompany their meal with slugs of a strong vodka-like spirit made locally, from maize. Wang Zerong, a retired worker, and his son-in-law, Liu Anyou, a farmer, say they drink alcohol with every meal; Wu Chifa, another local farmer, doesn't usually drink at breakfast-time, but makes an exception for these market-day gatherings. The atmosphere in the old town, with its rickety wooden house, is cheerful and relaxed.

Breakfast is a casual meal in this part of China. People snack on whatever's around: noodles, wontons or steamed glutinous dumplings wrapped in fragrant leaves. Over in the provincial capital, Chengdu, four or five hours away by road, a more typical breakfast is a thin rice porridge (xi fan) with side dishes of fried peanuts, spicy preserved vegetables and hard-boiled eggs, and perhaps also steamed buns stuffed with pork and seasoning. And you can also find on the streets, from time to time, vendors selling scrumptious you tiao, long golden strips of deep-fried dough which are eaten with mugs of warm, sweetened soya milk.

Fuchsia Dunlop

8am: Glasgow

Porridge does make it onto the Lees' morning menu, but their day kicks off with another cornerstone of Scottish cuisine. Soon after 10-month-old Matthew and four-year-old Anna bound into their parents' bedroom just before 7am, Jim Lee wrestles himself from between the sheets and makes for the kitchen. He returns with a pot of tea for himself and his wife, warm milk for the children and a Tunnocks Caramel Wafer.

Generations of Scots have been weaned on the snack, which is actually a stack of wafers sandwiched together with toffee and coated in chocolate. As Jim, 45, gets ready to head for work at Glasgow City Council, Christine ushers the children downstairs and prepares their food. 'Matthew still eats a baby formula porridge which is organic, but soon he'll move onto normal porridge,' she explains, adding that he has had an organic diet for his first year.

Despite the presence of a blue egg cup bearing legs, Anna, who also had an organic start to life, prefers hers hard-boiled and mashed in a cup with a knob of butter. 'Egg in its shell can be a bit tricky for kids, but from a cup she can get at it all,' says 39-year-old Christine, who until Matthew's birth worked for a company that designed children's playgrounds.

Alternatives for Anna are a couple of pieces of fruit or a bowl of cereal, the leftovers of which are sometimes polished off by her father, who along with Christine, largely sticks to further cups of tea, toast and Tunnocks.

Stephen Khan