It's no secret that our meat consumption is far higher than pretty much any health expert would recommend. But there is more than one reason to think about cutting meat out of your diet at least one or even a few days each week.These reasons include health, the environment, ethics and budget.Today’s traditional meat diets, which include two or three meals with meat in them each day see us eating far more meat than we need and they include nearly twice the saturated fats that healthy vegetarian diets contain.A healthy vegetarian diet that consists of foods such as fruit, vegetables, legumes, nuts, grains and soy products, lowers the risk of chronic diseases and blood pressure.The comparative environmental issues are pretty clear. Studies comparing vegetarian and traditional meat diets have found that conservatively, the production of meat to feed one adult uses approximately twice the amount of water than the production of vegetarian food.The greenhouse gas emissions released during the production of meat are also far higher, and it requires four times the amount of land cleared compared to that needed for the production of vegetarian food.Of course, it is far easier to plant food in your back yard or on your balcony than keep cows and chickens.From an ethical point-of-view, most people exposed to some of the media in recent years about the treatment of factory-farmed animals would have tried to introduce free-range meat into their diets. This kind of meat comes with a higher price tag than the factory-farmed meat because it is more expensive to produce free-range meat. This is yet another reason to cut back your consumption each week; that way when you do buy meat, you can afford to buy free-range or organic.Try going Meatless on Mondays - there is plenty of website support around. See also: How To Consume Less Meat.Image: Shutterstock