I do sort of think that the West (and I'm saying this as a Westerner) sometimes takes traditions from other cultures and strips away a lot of the meaning behind them in the name of making these traditions purely utilitarian or material.

I agree. It's probably the result of our ethnocentricity for two different reasons. For one, western religions, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and all of their branches, focus much more on the intellectual aspects than spiritual aspects. Yes, there is prayer and holy observances and lessons in spiritual metaphysics, but we don't put anywhere near as much emphasis on spirituality. More often than not, we're spent focusing on philosophy, ideology, dogma, and splitting hairs on the most minute of religious laws. When it comes to something like meditation then, it's no wonder we're more drawn to the physical aspects of it and not the spiritual aspects, because we as a religious culture seem to be more focused on what is practical and understandable and therefore in our eyes, more easy to practice.

Second, and probably more importantly, because cultural history plays a strong part in any religion and how it is expressed, in order to better understand Buddhism, Hinduism, Jainism, and other eastern "isms" we'd have to invest a lot of time and effort in learning about the cultures that those religions sprang from. That's something not many people are willing to do, and understandably so. As a result it's easier to take what we do understand, the meditation and yoga, the dietary practices, etc. and practice them as best as possible and then pay lip service at best to everything else. After all, it's still there if we want to learn about it and we can always get around to it tomorrow.