You may be wondering why some supposedly 'healthy' and 'environmentally conscious' companies deceive unknowing consumers into purchasing products with hidden additives and fillers. Perhaps one of the main reasons is that a large number of these pseudo-organic brands are owned by their very unhealthy 'competitors', such as Coca-Cola and General Mills. In fact, some of your favorite "All Natural" and organic companies may be owned by a corporate giant.

Companies like Honest Tea and Odwalla may appeal to health conscious shoppers, but they are actually owned by Coca-Cola - the very same company that is currently fuming over the requirement to change their recipes in order to avoid a cancer warning label. Another popular 'health' brand is Kashi, owned by the Kellogg corporation. It should come as no surprise that Kashi cereals have been found to contain a copious amount of GMOs and pesticides, according to an explosive report from the Cornucopia Institute. Kashi's 'Heart to Heart Blueberry cereal' was found to contain grains coated in the residue of many pesticides such as phosmet, carbaryl, azinphos methyl, malathion, chlorpyrifos methyl, chlorpyrifos. What's more, the company's products were found to oftentimes contain 100% genetically modified ingredients.

This information has been known for quite some time. Here's a really revealing image from Michigan State University that reveals who really owns your favorite company. See if yours is owned by a corporate giant (click for full size):

Producers of toxic BPA are now boasting $8 billion in sales for 2012 thanks to the FDA rejecting a potential ban on the cancer-linked chemical on March 30th.

According to GlobalData, manufacturers will produce 4.7 million metric tons of BPA this year to be dispersed into the daily lives of millions worldwide. BPA now goes into everything: plastic bottles, canned foods, DVDs, plastic wrap, and much more.

Despite being linked to about as many serious health conditions as the amount of products it contaminates, the FDA has decided once again to side with mega corporations over protecting the health of the people.

Even Campbell's Soup and the Heinz corporation are removing BPA from their products in an effort to reclaim consumers who are fully aware of the issues surrounding BPA. California is also banning the substance from baby bottles and sippy cups in attempts to protect newborn babies whose developing bodies are majorly affected by the estrogen-mimicking chemical.

The amino acid N-acetylcysteine (NAC) can reduce symptoms of compulsive hair-pulling, a condition known as trichotillomania.

This is according to a study published in the Archives of General Psychiatry, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.

Trichotillomania has been described for almost 200 years and researched for more than two decades. "Psychosocial problems are common in individuals with trichotillomania and include significantly reduced quality of life, reduced work productivity and impaired social functioning." the study explains.

The amino acid N-acetylcysteine (NAC) has previously shown promise in the treatment of repetitive or compulsive disorders. N-acetylcysteine (NAC) acts on the glutamate system, the largest neurotransmitter system in the human brain.

The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) seems confident that research on the toxicity of low doses of chemicals in food is irrelevant to risk assessment. This is despite mounting evidence that low-dose exposure, particularly to endocrine-disrupting chemicals, could be contributing to rising rates of a number of diseases, writes Paul Whaley.

Paul Whaley is Editor of Health & Environment and Communications Manager for the Cancer Prevention and Education Society. He contributed this commentary piece in exclusivity for EurActiv.

"Industry and regulators have a data problem: although EU chemicals regulation will ultimately require almost all substances to be risk assessed before they can be used, the toxicological data needed for this hardly exist.

Is tainting food with mercury a crime? Apparently only if you're a citizens and not a major corporation or a United States government agency. One retired pharmacist was rightfully arrested after contaminating cafeteria food with heavily toxic mercury, yet no action has been taken against processed food manufacturers whose products are known to contain mercury.

Nor has action been taken against the FDA, the organization that sits idly by as consumers continue to eat mercury-laden processed foods that make up on average about 90% of the US food supply.

It's no conspiracy theory, the Washington Times - a mainstream news publication - was actually the first to report on the crisis back in 2009. Now more than 3 years ago, activist groups expressed serious outrage over the findings.

Two individual scientific studies found the presence of the hazardous element mercury in nearly half of all high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) test samples. HFCS, of course, is a ubiquitous and oftentimes genetically altered ingredient that pervades the vast majority of processed foods. It makes sense, then, that mercury was identified in nearly a third of 55 popular brand-name food and beverage products which listed high-fructose corn syrup as the first-or-second-highest labeled ingredient.

In 1904, journalist Upton Sinclair went undercover at a Chicago meat packing plant to investigate and research the lives of immigrant laborers. He worked for 7 weeks incognito in the Chicago stockyards, gathering information about what he saw. The end result was less of a story about immigrant workers and more of a shocking realization about the state of America's meat packing industries and the working conditions therein. The Jungle, released in 1906, shocked an entire nation, and soon calls went up to the White house to address the issues raised in Sinclair's tell-all novel. The Federal Meat Inspection Act was quickly passed, followed by the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906, which laid the foundation for what would eventually become the Food and Drug Administration in 1930.

How interesting, then, as similar issues have arisen more than a century later concerning the state of our nation's food industry and a federal agency set in place in order to protect us.

Jamie Oliver, a modern day Sinclair, has been raising awareness about a now-common food processing practice that gets the nod of approval from the FDA. With help from a large television audience and social media, Oliver has our nation outraged over the use of pink slime in our ground beef, and as these companies struggle to deal with the hefty amounts of bad press they've been receiving, news has surfaced of sizable donations made by these beef companies to political parties, presumably for their protection.

The phrase "You never want to know how the sausage is made" has never rung more true than it does right now. However, as an ever growing nation (both in population and girth) demands more from our food industry, are we allowed to get upset when federal agencies begin to use methods such as these to bring fast and cheap meat to our tables?

Winniped, Manitoba - Pigs that might have become the world's first genetically modified animals approved for human consumption may instead face an untimely end, as key backers of Canada's "Enviropig" project withdrew their support for the controversial engineered animal.

Scientists at the University of Guelph, 90 km west of Toronto, bred the first GMO pig that was developed to address an environmental problem in 1999. The animal - known as Enviropig - digests its feed more efficiently than naturally bred pigs, resulting in waste that may cause less environmental damage to lakes and rivers.

The project has produced eight generations of Enviropigs, including the current herd of 16 animals. But they may be the last of their kind, after Ontario Pork - an association of hog farmers in the eastern Canadian province - yanked their funding last month.

"We think we took the genetic research as far as it could possibly go," said Keith Robbins, spokesman for Ontario Pork, which funded Enviropig with more than C$1 million ($1 million) since the late 1990s. "It's probably best for industry to take it forward. When you're the first of anything, it's tough to get it out of the gate."

Herbal preparations of thyme could be more effective at treating skin acne than prescription creams, according to research recently presented at the Society for General Microbiology's Spring Conference in Dublin. Further clinical testing could lead to an effective, gentler treatment for the skin condition.

Researchers from Leeds Metropolitan University tested the effect of thyme, marigold and myrrh tinctures on Propionibacterium acnes -- the bacterium that causes acne by infecting skin pores and forming spots, which range from white heads through to puss-filled cysts. The group found that while all the preparations were able to kill the bacterium after five minutes exposure, thyme was the most effective of the three. What's more, they discovered that thyme tincture had a greater antibacterial effect than standard concentrations of benzoyl peroxide -- the active ingredient in most anti-acne creams or washes.

Stress wreaks havoc on the mind and body. For example, psychological stress is associated with greater risk for depression, heart disease and infectious diseases. But, until now, it has not been clear exactly how stress influences disease and health.

A research team led by Carnegie Mellon University's Sheldon Cohen has found that chronic psychological stress is associated with the body losing its ability to regulate the inflammatory response. Published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the research shows for the first time that the effects of psychological stress on the body's ability to regulate inflammation can promote the development and progression of disease.

"Inflammation is partly regulated by the hormone cortisol and when cortisol is not allowed to serve this function, inflammation can get out of control," said Cohen, the Robert E. Doherty Professor of Psychology within CMU's Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences.

Cohen argued that prolonged stress alters the effectiveness of cortisol to regulate the inflammatory response because it decreases tissue sensitivity to the hormone. Specifically, immune cells become insensitive to cortisol's regulatory effect. In turn, runaway inflammation is thought to promote the development and progression of many diseases.

A Washington State University researcher has demonstrated that a variety of environmental toxicants can have negative effects on not just an exposed animal but the next three generations of its offspring.

The animal's DNA sequence remains unchanged, but the compounds change the way genes turn on and off - the epigenetic effect studied at length by WSU molecular biologist Michael Skinner and expanded on in the current issue of the online journal PLoS ONE.

While Skinner's earlier research has shown similar effects from a pesticide and fungicide, this is the first to show a greater variety of toxicants - including jet fuel, dioxin, plastics and the pesticides DEET and permethrin - promoting epigenetic disease across generations.