Is breakfast so important as a meal?

Ask anyone the most important meal of the day and you will get a universal view thats its breakfast, it seems common sense enough but here's the thing, a scientist from the University of Bath, Dr James Betts, senior lecture on nutrition carried out some research and the first thing he points out is that there is actually no, or at least very little actual research that has been carried out that substantiates the fact that breakfast is the most important meal. It would all seem based on a 1950s advertising campaign that pushed this message to sell more Cereal, Eggs and Bacon.
He is on the record as staring that he was staggered that such an accepted home truth could be so regularly asserted without a minutes worth of actual study to back this up.
Betts has carried out some research of his own where he took a sample of 40 individuals half had only water between waking up and lunch, the other half had a full 700 calorie breakfast and then he monitored their habits through the rest of the day, the result was that the water drinkers had a bigger lunch but did not eat up to the 700 calories consumed by the other sample, the breakfast eaters while eating slightly less at lunch DID also have seizable lunches. In-short a big breakfast does not mean lighter healthier meals for the rest of the day.
In a time when we all need to be eating less as obesity starts to become more and more of a problem it is worth considering that the breakfast missers were no less active but ultimately consuming less over the course of a day
The research is still in its early stages and so far its not being recommend to miss breakfast but merely to consider that thus far its not been proven to eat breakfast as a large meal to be healthy.