How to find products in COSDNA like a wizard

Have you ever tried to search for products with a preferred ingredient list already in mind? For example, I've always wanted a sunblock with no titanium dioxide and alcohol but must have zinc oxide. Instead of searching the web for each sunblock and checking the ingredients one by one, I use COSDNA's not-really-hidden feature of searching for products with inclusions/exclusions of ingredients. 

Read on to find out how to use COSDNA to its potential.

1. You must have a login account. Creating one is easy - just fill up their form on their website. You might be asked to verify your email. 

2. Once you're logged in, click on the "Ingredients" tab. From there, you'll see a search bar for ingredients.  

3. Enter your desired ingredient. As an example, I typed in "zinc oxide". After the search, a list of ingredients will be listed below the search box. Click on the desired ingredient.

4. You'll be taken to a page containing information such as its COSDNA rating as a comedogenic/irritating ingredient, molecular weight and description of use. These information are interesting, but it's not what we are after - instead, look for a box to the right which says "Contains the same ingredient". Below this box, click the link labeled "(For more information)".

5. You'll see two columns of fields - the left column for your preferred ingredients and the right column for your unwanted ingredients. In our example, I wanted my product  to have zinc oxide but to not have titanium dioxide and alcohol. After filling in those fields, click "Submit".

6. Ta-da! Below those fields, we now have a list of products which contain zinc oxide but does not have alcohol and titanium dioxide. There will probably be a long list (or none, sorry), but at least we have an idea where to start!

So there you have it, with a preliminary list of products containing your desired ingredient set, we can now focus on more specific items during our web search - price, performance of the product - which can be easily Googled. Thank you COSDNA for saving us so much time!