Nutrition hypotheses are particularly challenging because they’re often about how foods or constituents of foods or dietary patterns influence our pursuit of a long and healthy life. The hypothesis addressed in this book, for instance, is that sugar is the dietary trigger of obesity and diabetes and, if so, the diseases such as heart disease that associate with them. But this hypothesis is ultimately about what happens to us over decades—the time it takes chronic diseases to manifest themselves—and not months, as is the case, say, with vitamin-deficiency diseases like scurvy or beriberi.
