Culture is deeply connected to food. Just look at any culture you can think of and they all have dishes they identify as their food, owning it either by ingredients or the way ingredients are treated. Believes and traditions grow on to what first began as simple environmental conditions, providing certain food, disallowing for others.
Geography forms different environments that allow for different plants and animals to dwell. Imagine a very dry, warm land, and how hard it will be to grow crops if water is sparse. People settling in such areas will mostly rely on livestock that is able to eat tough desert plants, and won't consume a lot of water. That is actually considered the origin reason why muslim countries don't eat pork: the meat of pigs does not last as long as goat meat, and pigs use more water. Here you can read a good summary. 121
So the conditions that geography provides are very much responsible for the cultures that develop out of it.
Compare variety rich regions, which provide water, forests, plains and mountains in mild weathers full of wild life and the people will be healthy and happy to share what they have, to regions with unpredictable cold and windy weathers and only fish as their main source of food, and you will get folks with a harsher view on life.
You are what you eat. Nowadays we are able to eat almost ALL the dishes humanity has come up with, but just a few hundret years ago (or even just a half century ago) that was only possible for very few people. Kings in the past did not nearly get the variety of food we get today. In times of hunger many farmers and their households would eat porridge. Only porridge. For breakfast, lunch and dinner, every day of the year. Keep that on for some generations and the culture which grows out of that, even when eventually some bacon gets on the table, will call their children to be grateful for what they have and demand to be considerate. The demands of circumstances will become traditions will become religion. 121