  The light-quark flavor dependence of the proton sea has been of great
interest for many years because of its close connection with non-perturbative
effects. One hypothesis is that this dependence arises from the pion cloud of
the proton. We apply light cone perturbation theory and experimental
constraints to a chiral Lagrangian to compute the relevant Fock-space
components of the nucleon wave function with well-defined uncertainties.
Existing experimental information regarding the light flavor sea is studied,
and predictions for future experimental results are provided. Future
experiments have the ability to rule out this hypothesis and have profound
implications for understanding the nucleon-nucleon force.
