By the way, I realize now that your perceptions of prices might be colored by your time in India. Veggies have been more expensive than meat for years and years now (at least as long as I've been grocery shopping) largely due to US farm subsidies. Almost all farm aid goes to corn and soy, which in turn is almost all used as animal feed. There is next to no aid for vegetable farmers, who are also more subject to the weather, insects, and short term market pricing than the large grain agro-industries. This has been a growing area of social activism in the US for a while (see last week's NYT: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/04/dining/04farm.html, and one of the responses over the past 10 years is the network of farmers markets around the country.
So its not that the veggies are expensive (I get amazing zucchini in season for less than $2 a pound), but that industrial processed meat is too heavily subsidized (especially considering the effects it has on health and the environment).
As a bit of consolation, we pay far less for our food as a percent of our income than almost any first world nation. Europeans pay far more for their veggies, so don't feel so bad when paying $4 for a pint of fresh healthy strawberries!