When it comes to ease of living in the United States, our health — and the earth’s — can often pay the price. Convenience shops, big box stores and drive-thrus seem to etch themselves into our lives as we become too absorbed in the more major matters at hand. 

More than 15 students congregated at the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies on Friday for lunch and a lecture, titled “Multilateral Development Banking for This Century’s Economic Challenges,”...