I have written a bunch of times to the effect of that I think that more than 90% of the supplement industry is completely bogus. You do not need these things and they aren't going to do what it says on the package. If you start to see any of the effects that are outlined on most of the advertisements it is going to be purely psychosomatic and this has been proven in many studies involving placebos.
I don't believe in most of the supplements out there and the outlandish claims on the bottles and packages themselves just become more and more absurd. For one thing, there IS NO WAY to burn belly fat and a lot of these products claim that they do exactly that. You can NOT choose where your body decides to burn its fat and even if you don't feel like you have it, you have fat all over your body if it has started to build up in your belly. That is just the most noticeable place that people have it. If you have a gut, there is a good chance that the rest of your body contains higher than average levels of fat as well. I stand by my statement where I said that the only way that a person can target where body fat is lost is if they have invasive surgery including liposuction.
So now that we have established that I, and many real trainers that aren't selling a product, believe that almost all supplements are completely unnecessary and you can actually improve on the claims the bottles are making by simply eating real food. In fact, most claims about tablets and powdered supplements haven't been studied very closely and nobody actually knows if taking a vitamin-C tablet is as effective as just eating some oranges. Most studies have indicated that the tablets cannot replicate the effects that real food has and the supplement industry is able to get around this because they are not regulated. They can put basically whatever they want on the packaging and for the most part, not get in trouble for it.
That being said: If you do buy supplements, and I think you shouldn't outside of whey protein and maybe creatine, make sure that you but it from a place that has a reputation and preferably, physical stores.
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I realize that GNC and other shops like it are dying in a bricks and mortar sense, but they still have corporate standards that aren't going to exist with smaller shops or individual resellers on places like Amazon and Ebay.
A good rule of thumb is that if you are searching for a supplement and buy them based solely on price, there is a very good chance that the product you are purchasing doesn't actually contain what it says on the label at all.
In a recent discovery made by Amazon Amazon actually suspected one of the resellers featured on their own website "might be" selling bogus products. Think about it ok? When you get a bottle of tablets, how to you confirm that these actually contain what it is that you paid for? Pills look and taste like pills and unless you have extremely complicated scientific machinery in your house, you will never know if it actually does contain what it says on the bottle.
In some very rare situations there were fillers put in that were actually quite harmful for the end-user and the supplier doesn't care about this. They already have your money and if you were to ever try to contact them they are just a guy with an apartment, not registered company so if bad stuff started to happen they could just disappear into the night, especially if they are based out of a country that is not your own. Good luck finding any legal recourse if the seller is not subjected the country's laws that actually protect you, the consumer.
I truly believe that almost all supplements are a bunch of crap in a bottle that will never do what it says on that bottle and people around the world are wasting billions a year on snake oil. This industry will likely continue to thrive though because it seems that most people are looking for a quick fix rather than a lifestyle change - which is something you have to get out of your head if you are new to the fitness world. There are no shortcuts, they don't exist regardless of what the manufacturers of these magic pills try to tell you.
If you insist on being duped by a supplement, please make sure you buy it from a reputable company like GNC because at least then there is some level of accountability. I still think you are not very clever by thinking that a capsule is going to help you lose weight, but at least in this scenario you can be assured that the capsules or powders will actually contain what it says it does on the container.
I am not a professional trainer nor do I have any educational background to add credibility to my words. I do, on the other hand, have lots of real life experience as to what has worked for me and many others around me. There are NO shortcuts and you have to change your overall life, preferably slowly and in a permanent way.