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I think that there are two points to these kinds of restrictions nowadays.
The first is that their inconvenience reminds you of your religion. When you're not taking the elevator, not eating fish on Friday, not eating pork, etc., you are both reminded of the fact that you belong to religion X and forced to submit to that religion's teaching by doing something inconvenient.
The second factor is that it provides an external sign of group identity, which probably helps perpetuate the religion (as people pass down various customs), but which is also, to some extent, its own reward: people who keep the ashes on their forehead on Ash Weds. are engaging in the same behavior, basically, as people who wear team jerseys to work - they are demonstrating that they are proud to belong to a particular "team."
There are lots of explanations for dietary laws; my favorite one for the meat/milk thing (i.e., don't seethe the kid in the milk of the mother) is that it was an animal husbandry principle that you shouldn't kill off the younger generation of animals while the older one was still alive. Or something like that.
I think that the health related ideas are interesting, but I think that they are more appealing in our more rational age. And it's not like the Chinese all died of trichinosis from eating pork in their pre-refrigeration tropical climate.
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