Emulsified meat products, such as sausages, play an important role in modern food consumption . Meat products have been related to non-communicable diseases associated with high sodium chloride content . Development of healthier meat products is needed to meet consumers' requests. To succeed, there is a need to identify new ingredients that can replace salt . Eggshell membrane (ESM) is a protein-rich membrane between the eggshell and egg white, which is available as a by-product of the chicken egg processing industry. Fermented ESM was found to have functional, antioxidant and antihypertensive activities as well as antibacterial activity . Due to its physical, chemical and thermal properties ESM could have potential as a functional ingredient . ESM consists of a network of collagen fibers, and glycosaminoglycans such as dermatan sulphate, chondroitin sulphate, sulphated glycoproteins and hyaluronic acids . Addition of collagen in coarse ground and finely comminuted meat emulsion type products improved water-holding and reduced cooking loss . Whereas addition of dermatan sulphate, a glucosamine increasingly used as health supplement in foods, showed some detrimental effect on ham texture and cooking loss when incorporated in restructured ham via the brine . To our knowledge there are no previous studies that have examined the potential functionalities ESM can provide to emulsified meatproducts and whether it may help reduce salt in these products. Emulsified meat products are composed of protein-coated fat globules (oil droplets) dispersed in a myofibrillar protein gel matrix . Water holding is an important quality trait for emulsified meat-products influencing yield, textural properties, and juiciness . Functional properties such as water holding capacity (WHC), texture and emulsifying ability of processed meat are mainly due to the myofibrillar proteins depolymerized with the aid of salt and converted to a gel through heat setting . When NaCl is added to minced meat, the myofibrillar proteins are unfolded, which results in establishment of a dense protein network upon heating. Ionic strength, pH, and heat-treatment regime affect the heat-induced aggregate of the proteins and thus the microstructure of the product . Both texture and water holding properties depend on the microstructure and degree of protein aggregation . Gels with coarse, aggregated network structures and big pores held the water less firmly than gels with fine stranded and continuous matrices . Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) relaxation has gained wide use in meat research, as it provides unique qualitative and quantitative information regarding the physical state of water . Good correlation was found between WHC, NMR T2 relaxometry and the microstructural characteristics of heat-induced myofibrillar gels . FTIR microspectroscopy has been extensively used to study protein denaturation in meat and fish muscle tissues . These studies showed that salting in combination with heat treatment induced changes in the protein secondary structure, mainly characterized by transformation of α-helical structures to aggregated β-sheets and that this transformation was correlated to water distribution . Increased pH is related to increased water binding in meat and fish products . ESM has a relatively high pH . It is therefore of interest to test whether ESM affects the meat emulsion in terms of pH and functional properties and whether addition of ESM can reduce sodium chloride in emulsion-based meat products. This, in combination with a potential antioxidant effect of ESM can help reduce the negative health effects of such meat products. The main objective of this study was to investigate the effect of adding ESM to emulsified meat products with different levels of NaCl in terms of techno-functional properties. This to reveal whether ESM has potential to reduce NaCl in meat emulsion products. In addition to being highly dependent on proteins, both texture and water holding capacity depend on starch and other ingredients commonly used in emulsified meat products such as sausages. To elucidate the effect of ESM on the protein matrix structure, emulsified meat without additives other than NaCl and ESM was used as a model system. Cooking loss, texture, and color, which are important quality parameters, were measured on cooked samples, while the water distribution was analyzed by NMR T2 relaxometry on both uncooked and cooked emulsified meat samples. To examine the effect of ESM on the microstructure, both uncooked and cooked samples was examined by light microscopy, while changes in the secondary structure of the proteins were determined using FTIR microspectroscopy. In addition, an initial study of a possible antioxidant effect of ESM was performed using an in vitro digestive model.