“Americans tend to lack imagination when it comes to breakfast,” begins Malia Wollan in an article that appeared on New York Times last week. Her observation is based on a series of photographs taken by American born Hannah Whitaker, who recently visited with families in seven countries, to photograph sleepy eyed kids peering out over their breakfasts plates containing meals ranging from cold cereals to ham-and-cheese rolls to boiled potatoes.

Cornflakes and chocolate milk, are universal, but in many places children also eat things that would strike the average American as strange, or worse. How does rice and putrid soybean goop, or sour milk, for instance, sound? Or steamed cake made from fermented lentils and rice, a popular breakfast meal in southern India. In countries of Latin America, young children often take coffee with milk in the mornings. “The idea that children should have bland, sweet food is a very industrial presumption,” observes Krishnendu Ray, a professor of food studies at New York University who grew up in India. “In many parts of the world, breakfast is tepid, sour, fermented and savory.”