To meet current societal demand for more sustainable transformation processes and bioresources, these processes must be optimized and new ones developed. The evolution of various systems (raw material, food, or process attributes) can be predicted to optimize the uses of biomass for better quality, safety, economic benefit, and sustainability. Predictive modeling can guide the necessary changes and influence industrials, governmental policies and consumers decision-making. However, achieving good predictive capability requires reflection on the models and model validation, which can be difficult. This review aims to help scientists begin to predict by presenting the techniques currently used in predictive science for food and related bioproducts. First, a guideline helps readers initiate a prediction process along with final tips and a warning about the risks involved, with a particular focus on the crucial validation step. Three broad categories of techniques are then presented: empirical, mechanistic, and artificial intelligence (or “data-driven”). For each category, the advantages and limitations of current techniques for prediction are explained in light of their current domains of applications, illustrated with literature studies and a detailed example. Thus this article provides engineering researchers information about predictive modeling which is a recent relevant development in optimization of both food and nonfood bioresources processes. Practical applications Predictive modeling is a recent development of much relevance in the optimization of both food and nonfood bioresources processes. The goal of this article is to guide those in research or industry who would like to start predicting. Therefore, the article is intended as a primer on prediction concepts and predictive techniques for food and non-food bioresources processing. Three categories of techniques commonly used in these fields are illustrated by various examples of current applications and a more detailed example helps to understand the implementation process. An increased ability of the global scientific body to predict the outcome of various decisions, often linked or sequential, will open new avenues for designing food products with circularity in mind: maintaining value and not creating waste in the process.