Eat less meat and seafood, and contribute to environmental protection.

This is a key message that the Green Food Fair 2012, to be held in downtown HCM City fromSept. 11-14, seeks to impart, particularly to the youth of Vietnam.

The four-day fair that focuses on health, environment and "expressing gratitude to Mother", will be held at the city's Youth Cultural House.

Nguyen Van Nha, chairman of the Vietnam Hy Ma Lap Son Company Ltd., which is organising the event, said eating too much meat and seafood could cause many diseases while depleting scarce natural resources.

Livestock breeding is a significant generator of greenhouse gases, he said.

The fair, which has 50 food stalls, offers the opportunity for companies producing "green food" to promote their products, Nha said.

At least 120 dishes in Vietnamese, Asian and European cuisine will be offered at 30 stalls run by restaurants, pagodas and vegetarian food processing companies in the city.

Since the fair targets the youth, the food offered will mostly be fast food items, said Nguyen Thi Thanh Loan, general manager of the company.

She said the dishes would include banh bao (dumpling), banh beo (bloating fern-shaped cake) and banh gio (pyramidal rice dumpling) from Vietnam , Italian pasta and pizza, Indian curry, Japanese sushi and Thailand rice vermicelli.

"Clean food" processing companies like Thao Dien Clean Vegetables, Song Xanh, Hoa Sua Rice and Ohsawa Chan Nguyen will also participate in the fair.

Several kinds of organic rice cultivated without the use of chemical insecticides or herbicide will be displayed at the fair.

This kind of rice requires a long time and more care than normal to cultivate, so they cost two times as much as normal rice, Loan said.

The fair will also have other raw materials needed to cook vegetarian food and beverages.

Doctor Bui Viet Hoang will deliver a talk titled Eating Vegetarian Food, The Things You May Not Know at 3.30pm on the first day.

Ly Sanh, chairman of HCM City 's Chefs Association, will be the judge for the competition Cooking with Famous People that will be held at 2pm on the third day.

Besides the stalls, the fair will host several performance activities.

Around 300 visitors are expected to join a candle light vigil to express gratitude to mothers at 7.30pm on the third day.

The first two fairs in 2008 and 2010 attracted around 20,000 visitors each, Nha said.-VNA