Creating node in installation profile but body field stays empty
I know this old, but I just came across it.  It's really difficult to know what's going on without being able to look at all of the code, but my guess would be you are trying to use 'format' => 'filtered_html' before you've define it in the .install.  In the distributions I help to maintain, we always call filter_format_save as one of the first items of business... 

http://cgit.drupalcode.org/cm_starterkit_easy/tree/cm_starterkit_easy.install#n14