WELLINGTON  — Don’t take candy from strangers – or from airlines, says one particularly health-conscious traveller.

As reported in the NZ Herald, Freddie Coltart, who recently flew with Air New Zealand, took to Facebook to call the carrier out for distributing candy onboard to kids.

He wrote: “Hi Air NZ, When I was flying a few weeks ago I noticed that a little boy was handing out sweets on the flight. I know you’ve been doing this for years but don’t you think this might have become outdated? Kids eating sweets is bad for their dental and physical health.”

But if you think Coltart simply left it at that, think again. He went so far as to suggest an alternative ‘sweet treat’, one that would be much healthier for young tots.

His solution? Hand out prunes instead.

“What about handing out single serving prunes instead?” he added. “As one of NZ’s biggest brands it would be good to be encouraging clean eating and healthy digestion.”

He signed off encouraging Air New Zealand to “consider the prune”.

His post went viral, garnering close to 7,000 comments on Facebook. Not surprisingly, many of the comments slammed Coltart for being a bit clueless (again, we’re talking about prunes here), with people quickly pointing out candies’ dual-purpose on planes.

“The whole idea of sucking on a sweet is to equalize the pressure in your ears while the plane is descending,” wrote Brent Hodder.

Others didn’t think prunes would be a particularly ‘digestically’-sound option.

Judy Haldane wrote: “Prunes? How many toilets are on Air NZ planes for how many passengers?!?!!”

Many people didn’t have the patience to even deal with Coltart. Gayle Sinclair wrote, “You know where you can put your prunes Freddie” while Kyle McGovan responded with a simple “No just no.”

And Delwyn Luke, who perhaps had the best advice out of everyone, wrote: “Why get rid of what works, it’s up to the parents to sort out dental hygiene, not the airline.”