China's population of overweight and obese people has increased to about 340 million, according to a latest statistics released in Washington.

Some 341.9 million people in China are overweight or obese, an increase of more than 200 percent compared to 30 years ago, according to the Malnutrition Mapping Project, a new online statistics site launched at the US Chamber of Commerce on Tuesday.

It shows that overweight and obesity in age 20 and older has jumped to more than 25 percent, an increase from around 10 percent in 1980s. For those younger than 20, the proportion has risen to 20 percent from about 5 percent 30 years ago. The figure for overweight or obese adults in the US is 69 percent.

It also shows that stunting in Chinese children under 5 has decreased from 21.8 percent in 2002 to 9.4 percent in 2010. And the overweight ratio has reached 7 percent of the total population in the category.

Causes include lack of essential vitamins and minerals, such as iron and Vitamin A. And optimally breastfeeding can prevent undernutrition and potentially prevent obesity and non-communicable diseases later in life, according to the project.

"Every country has a different context, the Chinese context is unique for its massive scale and the huge social transformation," Dominic Schofield, director and senior technical advisor for the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN), told China Daily. "All of these are driving a new reality, and one is the formidable reduction in stunting that China has achieved in just a decade unprecedentedly."

"But by the same token, a more that 200 percent increase in overweight and obesity in youth, this is the future that we are speaking about. So that scale raises a whole range of challenges that other countries don't have to face," he said.

Developed by GAIN, the the Malnutrition Mapping Project launched at the UN Special Session on Children in 2002, with funding from Amway. It collects data from more than 30 countries representing low, middle and high incomes and provides an easy path to country-by-country statistics and insights on nutritional challenges, according to the project.

Steve Van Andel, chairman of Amway and former chairman of the US Chamber of Commerce, told China Daily that "to eliminate the malnutrition, especially in young children" was the company's ultimate goal.

"Nutrition is part of whom we are as a business, and we have always been focused on philanthropy, so the idea of trying to help people and the communities where we are has always been part of our business model as well," he said. "Our expectations are just to begin the education process, and we are hoping more and more people get interested in this issue."

"Malnutrition is something that preventable and will nice to be able to prevent," said Van Andel, chairman of the Executive Committee at the US Chamber of Commerce who has also been involved with the US China Business Council. "A big bite to chew, but we will try to figure out how to do that."

The company's charity foundation has been running the Spring Sprout Kitchen program, which equips village schools with kitchens for children to have hot meals with fresh foods and much better and more balanced nutrition, since 2013.

The program has built up more than 3,600 school kitchens across all the provinces in China, caring for about 1,500,000 children to date, according to the foundation.

Sheng Yang in Washington contributed to this story.